My wife is a non-exempt employee at a rather large company. The company has been attempting to cut down on overtime as the economy slows. Her supervisor has essentially told her that her job is not an 8 to 5 job and that she needs to be a team player and not claim her overtime.
2 questons:
What should my wife do first? Call HR? Talk to the supervisors boss, or just try to wait it out for awhile.
Even if she wanted not to claim her overtime, isn’t it unethical not to do so. Can’t you be fired for not claiming your overtime? Please cite some backup if you can for this question
AFAIK, overtime in exess of 40 hours must be paid. If they don’t want her working overtime, they should let her work 9 to 5 or 8 to 4. If the company insists she work 8 to 5, they either must pay her ovetime, or pay her a smaller hourly wage to compensate.
greenteeth: If I were your wife, I would claim the overtime and look for another job (because the shitepokes who would make such a demand are probably vindictive bastards). If you’re entitled to overtime (and some positions are not), claim it. Those !@#$%^&&* in management usually have as much gratitute as a block of obsidian. Screw being “a team player,” the worker is worth the pay as it says somewhere in the Bible.
I assume the law varies from state to state here, so asking you not to claim your overtime may or may not be illegal, but if it is illegal and you work for a reasonable company, the situation probably is that the supervisor is acting without HR’s consent (because he has his head up his ass and is just thinking of his budget), and if you went to HR just innocently asking to clarify the policy on this, they’d tell him in no uncertain terms to cut it out lest he bring on a lawsuit.
Granted, that’s a solution which ignores the political issues that could arise from bringing your supervisor’s transgressions to HR’s attention, but that’s something only someone directly involved can really make a judgement about.
Oh, and it seems very unlikely you could get in trouble for failing to report your own overtime. After all, you can just say “I don’t feel like I was productive during those N hours, so I felt it unethical to charge the company for them.” The laws about reporting overtime are there for your protection.
When the OP indicates that his wife is a “non-exempt” employee, that tells me that she’s covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which is a Federal law. State law can’t “undo” any of the provisions of a Federal law.
Under the FLSA, BTW, a supervisor cannot allow a non-exempt employee to work unpaid overtime, even if the employee wants to do so. I suppose this is to prevent employers from subtly coercing employees into “volunteering” to work unpaid OT.
I do like your idea of approaching the HR folks with sort of an innocent “Gee, I thought being non-exempt meant that I wasn’t allowed to work unpaid overtime” question. That should produce a resolution of the problem fairly quickly, IMO.
I think she should call HR first. If they echo the “party line”, call your state’s Department of Labor. Explain the situation to them and see what they suggest. It would be very helpful if you could get something in writing from your supervisor or HR stating that they want you to work unpaid overtime. I suspect that if you asked them to put it in writing, they would back down.
Every hour WORKED past 40 in a week must be paid, and State laws can only make the situation MORE favorable than the Federal 40 hour law for OT.
California requires OT paid by the day, when hours worked exceeds 8.
A non-excempt employee gets paid OT as soon as they work over 40 hours in a week, or 8 hours a day in California.
The only wiggle room a company has is if they were calculating OT based on sick time and vacation time and work time combined. If they were, they can pull back and go to the most basic legal requirement that says employees must be paid for all time WORKED over 40 hours per week.
The is very little debate about the OT laws, and any State laws - such as in CAL - can only be used to make the situation more favorable to the non-excempt employee (no State law can make it possible for a company to avoid the Fed requirement).
Demand OT and report their asses. Keep records and make internal complaints first.