Salaried employees and required work time...

Factual Questions
1

So I am looking for some legal direction here (not legal advice, which I will get if the situation merits it), specifically in regard to labor laws. For what it is worth in the narrowing of this legal directing, I and the company I work for are in the state of Utah.

I work for a company as a full-time, salaried software engineer. On occasion, this means that I will be putting in a lot of hours when we need to do a push. Sadly, it seems we are always doing a push. :slight_smile: But since much of the company’s revenue comes from other companies paying them hourly for work done, we are required to log all of our time. If our hours each week ever fall below forty hours, we get grief from the executives for our lack of performance. If we put in a lot of hours in a week, though, we don’t see any benefit. Again, such is life in the trenches.

But a couple of issues have cropped up. he company’s employee handbook is pretty vague on these (and other) issues. I’ve sent HR several emails trying to clarify the sundry issues, but they haven’t generated any response or results. (Perhaps because they want it to be vague? the paranoid part of my brain thinks.)

So here are my questions:

Question 1: My company provides me with a laptop and a cell phone, which means I am always on call. It seems to often be the case that when I am taking a sick or vacation day, I will get a call and be asked to help solve an issue, either verbally over the phone or by logging in remotely on my laptop. As a salaried employee, how should I log my hours? Say that I work on my vacation day for an hour. Do I log seven hours of vacation and one hour of work? Or as a salaried employee, does the hour of work mean I can treat the entire day as a full day of work?

Question 2: Recently, in order to generate some additional revenue, I was assigned to do contract work at another company site, which we will call Company B. This means I still act as a full time employee, but they bill Company B so many dollars per hour for the time I spend working there. Fine, I get that.

Recently, I believe due to a past situation*, I received a memo outlining a few new policies the company was putting in place. One part states that I am required to be at the customer’s site between 8am – 5pm. In addition, they state that I am required to log 40 billable hours a week. Other than the fact that this grinds on my soul like sand in the suntan lotion, can they legally do this, i.e. require a salaried employee to put in a certain number of hours?

Okay, so the wrap up here is that I need to find a new job. Tell me about it. But where do I stand legally regarding this other stuff? Can I make a stink and be standing comfortably on legal ground? What are my rights as a laborer?

  • My wife recently had surgery (to remove a gall bladder) and was restricted from driving for a couple of weeks. I was able to wrangle a week’s worth of time off (with the above issue of phone calls and urgent emails still cropping up, of course), but was required to be at Company B’s site a week after surgery. We have a child that needs to be picked up from school at 4:00pm. each day. I decided I could manage that by getting in early so I could leave in time to pick up my child. It worked fine, until a VP from my company decided to make a surprise call on Company B near closing hours and noticed I was not there. This upset him.
2

You probably just need to find a new job. I see where you are coming from though. They are treating just like a contractor but paying you as an employee (Exempt). Icould see how you might win something if you had lots of resources and determination.

You might want to try hera as well.

http://www.laborlawtalk.com/showthread.php?t=84294&highlight=60+70+hour+work+week

3

This is not legal advice but I will tell you what I have experienced in the last 27 years as a software developer and software development manager in MD, DC, and VA, much of which time was in federal contracting.

I am assuming that you, as a salaried person in a professional job, are exempt, which means exempt from labor laws that require hourly overtime, etc. In such a case the company can set pretty much whatever policy they want as far as working hours.

Nothing to add here except to commiserate. Typical policy is that 40 hours is a minimum.

Depends on company policy. Do they allow any time worked at home to be chargable (when I say chargable, I just mean that you can log it as time worked, not necessarily charge it to a client)? Do they allow you to take vacation in hourly increments? If both of those are “yes”, then you should be able to charge the hour, and just 7 hours of vacation. In my last company, their policy was that you could not have work hours and vacation hours in the same day. That implied that if you were home sick but then worked one hour, you charged the one hour. It was at manager’s discretion as to whether you had to make up the other 7. Most reasonable managers take into account the fact that most people work extra hours, so they cut you some slack if you have a situation like that. All of this depends on your company’s policy and mangement culture.

You bet. They don’t have to pay you for overtime, either. However, many companies offer some sort of compensation for extended overtime hours, or comp time. Again, it all depends.

You may have a legal issue here, please contact a labor attorney. The Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of absence “to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition”–however it does not require the employer to pay the employee for it.

That’s a Dilbert cartoon. I hate managers who manage by the clock instead of by results. Did you work out your schedule with your management, or just do it? If the VP got annoyed, would your manager stick up for you? If you have decided to leave it may be a moot point.

I respectfully disagree with this interpretation. The situation described is industry standard when the employer is in the business of contracting out services. Employees fill out timesheets to log every hour (many log to the 0.1 of an hour) and the employer bills the client based on hours, or based on whatever contract arrangement is in place (cost reimbursable, hourly rate, etc.). The amount of money the employer is making by billing the employee’s hours over 40 is not reflected in the employee’s pay, except for benevolent employers as mentioned above. Assuming he is getting benefits commensurate with being an employee, he is not being treated as a contractor. (You are probably aware of the hot water Microsoft got into by doing the reverse–hiring contractors who later sued, claiming that they were tantamount to being employees, but didn’t get employment benefits.)

4

I am technically a software engineer (that’s what my job title says, even though I do a lot of hardware design too). A lot of what you are complaining about is pretty much the way the industry is. If you get a job somewhere else chances are you’ll encounter mostly the same type of stuff.

I would still log it as 8 hours of vacation or sick. You get screwed for an hour of your time, but you are a salaried professional, not an hourly grunt. You’re expected to deal with things like this and not complain. Nitpicking over an hour is acting like an hourly grunt, and makes you look bad. A salaried employee is expected to work typically 50 hours a week, and do whatever else is necessary (occasional long nights, weekends, whatever) to get the job done. Occasional 60 and 70 hour weeks, while still only putting down 40 on your time card, are pretty much the norm, as long as those long weeks happen only occasionally.

You want a straight 40 hour week? Do contract work. Then every hour your work is billable.

8 to 5, assuming a lunch break (even if you can’t leave the site to eat) is pretty much standard. If you are contracted out to company B and aren’t on site full time, company B has the right to get royally pissed. Company B is your customer, and being a professional, it is your job to make comany B happy. Even if company B doesn’t give two hoots if you are there or not, if your boss thinks you should be there, you should be there. This is very typical in the industry.

I’m not surprised he’s upset, but does he know that you were going in early? VP’s usually don’t know such details. If he knows you were going in early and still gets upset, then you have a right to be pissed.

5

I’d just like to point out that the “norm” varies. I’ve been a salaried software engineer for 15 years, and Mr. Athena has done the same for more like 25 years.

The “norm” for us (and our coworkers) has always been 40 hour weeks, with overtime only when projects get crazy. Even then, I have never had a job require more than 40 hours a week. Yes, it looks better if you put in the overtime and if you expect big raises and such you’re expected to put in the time when necessary, but the people with kids or other commitments or whatever were not penalized when they had to leave after only 8 hours.

I would never take a job that expected more than 40 hours a week. Life is too short, and I’ve never had a problem finding a good paying, interesting job that absolutely required more than 40 hours a week.

6

Count yourself lucky! My experience has been in the D.C. area and maybe the work culture here is different than elsewhere, but the software industry has a reputation of working people to death. I have frequently worked 50-hour weeks, on rare occasion worked 80-hour weeks, and at least twice worked more than 24 hours straight. I don’t want to start a horror story contest, but your post is definitely encouragement for Level3Navigator to up and go.

7

Thanks for the replies and perspective from others in the industry. In regard to the VP, yes, I did inform him (and my manager and other execs in the company) that I was going to be coming in early and leaving early during that week so I could attend to family duties in regard to my wife’s surgery. My manager was oaky with this, so there was no foul in doing so. Just more information I didn’t include in the original OP.

The responses given on sick and vacation time begs the question: Yeah, sure a hour of time is fine, I’m not going to complain and have logged it in the past as a day of sick / vacation / etc and just given them the hour. Sorry, poor example. Sometimes it is more than hour. How many hours of work should I have to work before it ceases being a vacation day and turns into a work day? Again, this isn’t stated in any HR doc, so the industry standard would be nice to know.

8

I think the only GQ-type answer you’ll get to this is, “If you’re exempt - it’s up to your employer what policy they set about hours worked,” as mentioned above. The idea is that it’s also up to you, as a “professional”, skilled worker, to find another job if you don’t like that policy.

Now the IMHO part:

I was a salaried employee for years, and only recently have become a contractor. My take on the salaried thing is that it’s a two-way street: boss needs you to stay behind till midnight to fix an online problem? You’re expected to do it; as a salaried employee, you’re more like “management” than “worker” and are expected to have more of a vested interest in the company, rather than the clock. Company wants you to postpone your vacation in Taihiti because of a deadline? Probably have to do it, but they owe you one. I’ve found this especially true in America, where you’re expected to donate your soul to your employer. When I worked in France, if someone had even dared schedule a meeting between noon and 2pm, let alone ask people to work on a weekend, they’d have received a barrage of “go frak yourself” type replies.

However, the same should hold true if you need to take off at 2pm to go to the dentist, or take a half-day off because your kid is sick: your boss should let you do that too. Just feeling bored or pissed off and need to leave at 3pm? Let the boss know and take off. It’s give and take. In the jobs I’ve been in, as long as I was open with my manager, this kind of thing was always OK. Same thing if, like in the OP’s situation, I was forced to log on from home during a work/sick day to fix a problem: next day I’d let my manager know, and tell him I’d like to take off a couple hours early. No need for paperwork or trying to placate the Billing Gods of the time reporting system.

Of course, this all depends on finding a job with a reasonable manager, but that’s something you should be looking for anyway.

9

One thing that occurred to me after writing my post, and which I never really discussed with any of my managers: what are the legal (e.g. insurance) ramifications of my being out of the office on “comp time” when I’m supposed to actually be there? If I get hurt, am I still insured, etc. ? If I stand on a crate in the town square, shouting “XYZ Company sucks!”, am i doing it on company time?

I don’t know how that all works. Luckily, it never came up.

10

I should probably point out that most of my experience has been in the Baltimore/DC area also. Maybe we need to move to someplace where they treat their engineers better. :wink:

11

Me and Mr. Athena’s experience was primarily in the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado.

Don’t get me wrong - there were plenty of jobs there that would quite happily work you to death. But there were plenty of other jobs where the majority of the engineers worked normal hours. You just had to make sure you had one of the latter, not one of the former.

12

I am in much the same position as Level3Navigator. I am expected to bill a minimum of 40 hours a week. Currently I average a bit shy of 50 hours a week on average, but receive nothing for it (nor does the client pay anything).

I am on vacation this week, using some of the accrued PTO that I will start losing as of my anniversary, and have been called by the client. Twice. Once was a problem, once was to express his surprise that I had not been checking my e-mail or dialing in to the conference calls. :rolleyes:

My experience is that as long as I am booking at least forty hours per week, my employer doesn’t care. The client will push for as many hours as he can get. Why not? It doesn’t cost him anything. The give and take that DarrenS describes can work, but it is going to be my responsibility to enforce the “give” part. Thus I will not bill the hour or so I spent working while on vacation, but I will report the hour that I took off to go home early and see my daughter’s concert as work time. And if the client kicks up stroppy, point to the fact that all my projects get done on time or early, and politely ignore the rest of his crapola.

In the ‘bitter irony’ part of life, I now must abandon this post - and go resolve another problem.

Regards,
Shodan

13

Umm… surely if you’re taking a day off sick, you’re sick, and so the response to any phone call should be, “I am unwell and not in a fit state to provide any useful assistance. Goodbye.” If you’re on holiday, well, you let the phone ring out - it’s there for your convenience, not theirs.

As for the rest of it, you need to look closely at your contract of employment. Here in the U.K., (gross generalisation alert - IANAHR person) if you don’t object to a change in your contract then you’re deemed to have accepted it.

14

Oh yes, with regard to my first paragraph above, if your boss calls you on it, point out that you were sick, and would he like the possibility of the company being sued or blundering because of a statement of a sick employee?

And why is the Google Ad for ‘Humor Writing Workshops’? :smiley:

15

Since you have the option of logging your time hour by hour, log the hours that you spend working and subtract it from your vacation time. Your vacation time is probably calculated as 1 vacation day = 8 hours. You’ve earned the vacation time.

I log every hour that I spend working. Need me to bounce a server in the evening? It’s on my timesheet. Need me to check a process on the weekend? It’s on the timesheet. I want my boss to know exactly how much of my time the client is eating up, and when. Conversely, if I have a short day, need to leave early, or have to run an extended errand over lunch, that’s on the timesheet as well.

Turn off the phone if you’re on vacation. If anyone squawks, say “I was someplace where it was not appropriate to receive a phone call” and offer no further explanation. If you feel you must respond to messages, set aside an hour or so to check your voice mail and handle any truly urgent issues.

16

Quartz, you are clearly in the UK, not the US. The cultures and laws are very different. You might be able to say “I’m sick, can’t talk now” if you are using Family Medical Leave Act time which means you’ve got Dr. certification of a “serious health condition.” Other than that, though, the employer is essentially granting sick leave as a courtesy.

Maybe we all need to go to the UK…

17

Here in the U.S. we generally don’t have employment contracts, except for very highly placed executives and for collective contracts for Union employees. A person like the OP wouldn’t have one. Many, if not most, states have “at will” employment law, which for the layperson means the company can set the rules and change the rules anytime, and the company can fire without cause and the employee can quit without cause.

18

As a consultant, much like lawyers, we are required to log the hours we work for the purpose of billing our clients.

My general rule is to bill all the hours I work, unless I am spinning my wheels. It totally depends on your company - my current employer requires we bill in 6 min increments like lawyers while other firms, it’s either 4, 8 or 8+ hours increments.

I would definitely bill any hours you work on vacation. Actually, I would just leave my Blackberry and laptop locked in my desk and say fuck it 'cause Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.

What’s so hard about working 8-5? That’s what we in the business world call a normal work day. And yes, they can legally fire you if you don’t work it.

19

So if I only clock 39 hours one week, what does my employer look like when he complains?

20

I don’t have a problem working 8-5. I do that, go home with my laptop, and if the situation merits it, do some more work that evening remotely. My question was whether it was legal for a company to specify how many hours an exempt employee is required to work.