Do you know if “on the way home” means to your home (ie commute, doesn’t get paid) or back to home base (work site, so should get paid)?
No, it’s not nearly the same. What they are asking you to do is falsify your your time sheets to cover their ass for their illegal employment practices.
Listen – You know they’re screwing you. They know they’re screwing you. The question you have to answer is – if you stand up for your rights, can you afford to lose your job with them? Because they will very likely fire you.
As far as calling the Labor Department (state or federal), absolutely you should register a complaint if your agency doesn’t make this right. What you should do RIGHT NOW is to call them (or a lawyer) and ask a hypothetical – if you make this complaint and are fired, what compensation can you personally expect to get for this? Yes it’s great for workers of the world to stand up on behalf of all of us, but that doesn’t pay next month’s rent.
I’d say that if you fill in your own payroll, you absolutely DO fill in <whatever time you arrive at the agency in the morning> until <whatever time you leave the agency at night> as the hours you worked. I can’t even imagine what kind of bucket of worms it would open for them if they just decided to not pay you because they didn’t agree with your hours.
And yeah, file complaint/get REAL advice/ yadda yadda.
But wow. That’s some balls there on that company.
Good targets, from the sound of it.
No, I didn’t negotiate anything.
The actual policy, when I got them to clarify, was different from the one that I had overheard on the jobsite.
Ok, I have heard of that before, travel time being less than time spent ON the job. But it sucks if you spend more time travelling than working.
I have worked for several temp agencies, and eligibility for benefits was always calculated by the hour, not the day, since a given assignment could be anywhere from 2 hours upwards, or 4 hours a day or whatever. You need to clarify this with them, or you’re likely to be in for another unpleasant surprise.
This is important if in fact your benefits are based on cumulative work hours rather than work “days”. if you only report half the hours you work instead of reporting all of them (with a lower pay rate for the travel time), you are going to take that much longer to accumulate enough time to earn benefits.
And if they asked him to steal proprietary information from a client he should do that also in order to keep this wonderful job?
That’s wonderful. I’m sure that your advice to your employees was not to bend over and spread them - and I also assume that you didn’t ask your employees to assist you in breaking the law.
What on earth are you talking about? He is not being asked to commit a crime. He’s being asked to take less pay than he bargained for in exchange for keeping the job. They don’t have to keep him on the job if he doesn’t like the terms. They still owe him full pay for the amount of time he worked under the terms agreed to. But if he insists on collecting that he may not get any more work.
But I’m sure you’d quit your job instantly if you were asked to take any pay cut. After all, who cares about paying bills?
He’s being asked to falsify his own time sheet in order to cover his employer’s ass. They presumably could, if they wanted, tell him to fill in the correct times and specify which of it was at-work travel time, and pay him at a lower rate for that time. Instead, they’re asking him to only report half the at-work travel time he actually does.
I can’t say I know exactly why this is, but I know it’s not a legitimate business practice. And as I noted in my previous posts, there’s a good chance that under-reporting his own hours will ultimately cost him in other ways. Specifically, if he has to work X number of hours before he can receive benefits like accruing vacation time and sick leave but he’s actually putting in 10 or 12 hours a week that’s not being credited to him.
Well I have to apologize to you. **Boyo Jim’s **post above alerted me to something I missed. He should not falsify his work log. I would not recommend that in any way. He can accept half pay for the driving time if he chooses, and every hour should count towards his 90 days. The agency is likely trying to find some way to cover their own mistake in contracting with the client, and the OP has to consider finding a way to be cooperative to keep his job. Falsifying his time sheets is not the way to do that though.
I would simply suggest that the OP try to find a way to work this out with the agency if he wants to keep his job.
Boyo Jim, thanks for pointing that out. I could have sounded like a bigger buffoon if I kept up this line of argument without that information.
I’m sure you’ll have another chance. 
Yeah, well when opportunity knocks… :smack:
One other potential serious negative consequence of not correctly reporting all your hours – overtime. If you don’t report all your work time, you may end up losing quite a bit of money.
You say sometimes you spend 6 hours traveling to and from the work site in the company vehicle? How many hours do they expect you to work when you get there?
It sounds to me like the client and the agency were unclear about the terms under which the agency was providing your time. I am sure this kind of thing has happened to the agency before and they’re sticking you with part or all the difference the client is now willing to pay.
I’ve had the better part of 20 years of experience both as onsite tech and as someone that outsourced tech jobs to subcontractors. There are all sorts of arrangements on travel. Some bill travel at their hourly rate. Some half. Some have a separate hourly travel rate.
But none of that should be your issue. The agency is the one trying to get you to cut the rate at which you bill them for your time. The travel issue is baloney.
However, your agency is essentially your sales rep and it generally pays to work with them. ALWAYS report your time and how it was spent accurately. If they choose to pay you at a reduced rate that is something you can negotiate with them in the future.
But think about this - if they get to bill you at half your normal rate for drive time, odds are the client would jump at that because you’d be dirt cheap to service their distant clients. The agency likes it, the client likes it, but not so good for you.
If, per the representations made in this thread, federal law requires full payment for all hours worked, travel time included, how can arrangements different from that be made without violating federal law?
On the day in question, IIRC, we put in 3 or 4 hours of actual work. Don’t have my copious notes in front of me…
+1 on both. And if you have already submitted time spent travelling and they refuse to pay you for it, take them to small claims court.
The client doesn’t care what the agency pays the worker. And the agency will probably pay eventually if you push it and then never work with you again. “Violations” happen all the time.
And this is exactly why those companies get away with this bullshit. They know damn well people are desperate and will exploit them without reservation. Whether I took the job or not, I would be reporting that shit to the FSLA.
So you behaved evilly and even failed at THAT, huh?
Sorry, man, that must hurt. ROFL