I work at a company that makes heart stents, and the likes.
Last Sunday we ran out of material, and said we could go home and either take vacation pay or no pay or sit in the break room for 8 hours and receive full pay. They said they were working hard on getting the necessary material. They took our phone numbers and said to wait until they call us to come in. Someone from the company called late Tuesday and said you can volunteer to come in on Wednesday. I went in. To make a long story short, in the beginning they said they weren’t sure how those days would be paid since it wasn’t our fault. They said go ahead and take no pay or our vacation days until they get the details worked out. Then yesterday we had a meeting with the head honcho, he said if we thought we were on call-our perception was wrong. And we would not be paid for those days we were out. Is it legal not to pay us for time when they said go and wait for our call?
Sounds to me like you were furloughed for a few days until management decided that they needed you again. Did you get anything in writing? I would have camped out in the break room for 8 hours unless they had made it clear that I would be paid by staying at home.
Unless you are covered by a contract, I don’t see how it can be illegal for a boss to tell an hourly worker to go home (and therefore stop getting paid) when there is no work to be done. Do you still have the option to claim vacation time or has the pay period ended already?
I don’t see any reason why it would be illegal. My company sends people home all the time when there’s no work to be done; it’s usually voluntary, but on dire occasions we have made it mandatory for people to leave. They are not paid for this time.
Unless you specifically agreed to be on call at a certain pay per hour (generally far less than your hourly rate), then I would imagine you are unpaid.
Since you have no specific agreements or contact, I doubt that there is any way that you can fight this one.
My vacation has already been used up. At the beginning of the year they made us schedule our vacations to their convenience.
When they said, “wait until you are called” tells me that I was “on call” and therefore not free to do what I want because I’m waiting for them to call and go in as soon as they do if directed to do so.
You need to talk to a lawyer. The answer to your question may well depend on exactly what you were told, when. No one here is qualified to help you work through that.
–Cliffy
As Cliffy says, this isn’t qualified advice but a possible avenue: in my previous position we would send people home all the time if not enough lazy people decided not to play sick or otherwise not show up (i.e., too many workers). People that left work voluntarily would receive no pay. If there weren’t enough volunteers, then we’d send people home against their wills, but the state (Michigan in this case) would pay unemployment benefits for “short work week.” It wasn’t the complete hourly wage, but it was something, because these people were essentially laid off on these days.
Generally, if a company runs out of work, they can send you home sans pay. If they get hit by a natural disaster, power outage, etc…same deal.
If they have an internal policy or an internal practice that is inconsistent, then you could open a can of worms.
They are off the hook if they operate consistently, if the polciy is documented and if they practice their policy consistently thru-out the company.
Considering their dopey comment about the break-room, their stupidity might be demonstrated/documented, but their documented stupidity actually benefits you.
Did they say
“We’ll call you to let you know when to come in”
or did they say
“Wait at home, we need you to be immediately available when we call.”
One is simply practical, the other is much more like being on call.
But I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if the distinction holds any legal weight. My guess is that you’re screwed either way. The safe bet would have been to camp in the break room all day with a good book.
From http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs22.htm
But state laws may give you rights that federal law does not. Best bet–call a lawyer or your state’s wage & hour division or better yet, both.
When the big multi-state blackout hit a couple of years ago, everyone at my company had to take vacation time or else not get paid. It sucked, since I don’t normally take a day off and then go sit in the dark without electricity, but why should the company pay us for days when we didn’t work?
In my case because the company errored when they didn’t order enough material. The situation was within their control, it wasn’t a natural disaster they couldn’t control.
Any suggestions on how to speak to a lawyer for less money then she’d get paid for those 3 days?
What Gfactor said.
Also: go to google. Type in “[your county] County Bar Association.” When you get your county’s bar association, look for Lawyer Referral Service, or browse their “Public Services” page to see if they have free or cheap call-in services.
If you can’t find a bar association for your county, try neighboring counties. If that doesn’t work, try your state’s bar association. Look for county bar associations linked there, or lawyer referral services. You’ll generally get better results from the local bar association webpages than the state page, but if you’re in a pretty rural area, the state page may be your best bet.
It sounds to me like they were saying: go use your vacation time or go without pay, but we’ll call you as soon as we have real work to do again, so that you wouldn’t have to use any more of your vacation time than necessary.
My company (Detroit area) paid all of us salaried folk, and all of the hourly were reimbursed by the State of Michigan for short work week.
This is not legal advice, but it’s been my impression forever and ever and ever here in Michigan: when you’re involuntarily out of work due to no fault of your own, you get unemployment benefits. Yes, there’s often a week or two waiting period to file, but that’s just for filing. You still get the benefit. I should think that this may be possible in other states, too.
Your location appears to be a California zip code. Have a look at http://workitout.ca.gov/ or http://dir.ca.gov/
On days that you showed up expecting to work, but are sent home, you’re probably entitled to “reporting time pay” equal to half a regular day’s wages. Pretty much the only exceptions to this are disasters, utility failures or bomb threats.
This part seems pretty clear to me. If you’re not there, you’re either on paid vacation or not being paid. If you are there, you’re sitting in the break room doing nothing, but getting paid. Then they take down your numbers, presumably to inform you when you MUST be back, because they’re up and running.
It also sounds like there was a fair amount of poor communication afterwords, causing people to think they’d be paid while at home, and sit around the phone waiting for a call.
Cliffy is probably right, though, in that only a lawyer who can sit you down and ask pointed questions can sort through the exact situation to determine whether or not you have a case.
Another thought – it’s generally true that employers don’t want to have adversarial relationships with there employees. Sure, there are bad managers, and if the company is small enough, just truly bad owners. But as general rule of thumb, a business doesn’t want to screw over the people that make the business a success. So, what I’m getting at is this: amongst all of the affected employees, maybe you can choose someone charismatic enough to bring up the case with the HR manager before resorting to lawsuits and unfair labor practices and so on. I’m not suggesting that you don’t use the law for its rightful purpose, but in light of everything that happened, it may be that the company just decides it’s easier and more fair to compensate the affected people and chalk it up to one of their own lessons learned.