My bosses at work have been screwing some of their employees out of money by not having us clocked in when we thought we were. I found out what was going on Tuesday night and confronted the manager, telling her it was illegal. It wasn’t rectified when I talked to a manager the next day. I was told “it’s only a couple of bucks” and “you guys are so spoiled,” so I informed them I wouldn’t work there anymore after the rest of my scheduled shifts. Tomorrow will be my last day. Now I’m pretty sure they’re going to give me the back pay I asked for (I’ll make sure tomorrow) but that was only two hours. (The problem only affects closing employees, and I just started closing recently.)
So I don’t have to deal with the thieving bastards anymore, but I don’t want them to just get away with it. They probably owe dozens of hours of back pay to other people there, and I’m sure at least some of those people won’t be demanding what they are owed since they don’t want to get fired. I don’t think illegally screwing employees out of money should be a profitable business tactic.
So the company I work for is [deleted by moderator]. They have all kinds of bureaucracy there, but I’m not exactly sure if I should go to them. There’s one guy (District Operator I think is his title) who supervises the nine stores in my area, but he doesn’t much like me and I know he is far more concerned with labor costs as a percentage of sales than whether or not us lowly employees are happy. I think if I go to him, he’ll tell me he’ll look into it and then do nothing. And how will I know anyway whether anything gets done?
There’s a human resources number I could call. Although I was told by a former assistant manager today that if I go to them without talking to the District Operator first, that would somehow damage my case. But I’m not looking for anything for myself, I just want the store to suffer some sort of penalty, so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen in the future.
Of course, I don’t really know if the HR people would really care, they might blow me off as well. So I could contact some government authority. Would the U.S. Department of Labor be who to go to here? I think the government would be a tad more objective than the corporation trying to make as money as possible for themselves. But it might be overkill to get the Feds involved.
So what should I do here? What would be the best way to get the store in some kind of trouble so that the managers (or whoever’s idea it was to squeeze labor costs so hard that we were denied money we were owed) realize that not only is it unethical, it’s unprofitable?
Corporations hate hate hate when you don’t take complaints through proper channels, and it likely would make them less inclined to pursue the matter for you if you jumped up the chain of command. That especially true if you’re quitting tomorrow.
I would go to your District Operator first, if he is next up the line, and only go above him if he fails to respond adequately. But above all, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. Try to keep all correspondence in written form; stay off the phone if at all possible. Keep track of who you’ve talked to, and when, and what the substance of the conversation was. If you don’t have a personal copy of your employee handbook, get photocopies before you leave of the pages relevant to how you are supposed to be paid. Hopefully you won’t need any of that info later, but better to have it than not.
If going up the corporate chain of command brings you no joy, the next step for you would be to go to the Tax and Labor Law Department of the Texas Workforce Commission. They have information and forms available online that you can use to file a claim for unpaid wages. I don’t think the Fed. Department of Labor would get involved unless [employer’s name deleted by moderator] was shorting employees’ paychecks in multiple states, or it turned out to be some sort of discriminatory issue.
My response to comments like these is, “If it’s only a couple of bucks, pay it to me.”
Don’t call, write. Keep copies of everything you send. Note in the letter you are giving them 7-10 days to respond before going up the food chain.
Do not call them a bunch of goat-felching baby rapers. Keep in professional and stick to the facts of the case only, no opinions as to their motivation.
Since this is an ongoing legal matter and you have mentioned the name of your employer, I would recommend you close this thread, or at least get a mod to delete the name of the company. I don’t know how big this will get, but you don’t want their attorneys subpoeaning the Reader because of what you posted here.
I used to work for Grand Auto (before they were bought by CSK Kragen). Started in the stores, was in mgmt within 3 months and spent about 6 years as a Floor Manager. Got tired of dealing with the continuous stream of idiot customers; I rejoiced when I transferred into the warehouse clerical staff. I had a couple hoity-toity titles and when CSK bought out, I was one of like 6 of 40 Grand office people picked up. I considered this an exceptional example of my skills, but enough tooting my own horn. I’m sorry.
Anyway, when I went to the Regional offices of Kragen, I hated my job. I was supposed to be the Maintenance Coordinator, which involved having stores call me to schedule repairs/maintenance/emergency things. Not fun. I had these dipshits calling me to replace a lightbulb. Yes, I know the ceilings are high, okay. Well, after six months I quit. On to the OP…
About six months later (1 year into the buyout) I received a letter stating that two former-Grand employees (that I knew) had instigated a class action lawsuit because mgmt in stores was regularly, every shift, scheduled for 10 hours and got paid for an eight-hour day. CSK was assuming responsibility for the lawsuit. I filled out a form, estimating the number of hours I’d worked extra and mailed it in. The document also released them from my coming back with another lawsuit. I ended up with a check for about a grand. It was like free money so I felt finally justified for something that we were told to just accept despite it being quite illegal.
Depending on how motivated you are YOU could be those two guys that initiated it. I’m certain they ended up with all of the legal fees paid.
It is illegal to misrepresent time on legal documents (timecards).
Where should you take the complaint? First, up the food chain in writing. Second, to whoever in your state handles wage and hour complaints. Sounds like **sunfish ** has you pointed in the right direction.
The penalties for employers are typically payment of back wages, or multiples of back wages if the underpayment was willful.
Not at all, I didn’t realize it might cause a problem. And thanks for the advice everyone. I’ll be sending an e-mail to the District Operator soon. And I’m keeping in touch with a couple of my ex-co-workers to make sure they get their money.
What sort of multiples are we talking about? Any good resource I can look at to find out? The underpayment was most certainly willful, and a co-worker claims they told him he was being paid for the time in question. It wasn’t until I raised hell about it this week that anyone realized they were getting stiffed.
Howie, the District Operator might legitimately fix the problem, but his area of concern is figuring out what is most beneficial to the company. You seem to be more intersted in justice for your collegaues. As such, the place tto contact is the government, not a company flunkie who may or may not be interested in making things right.
The Wage and Hour Division on the U.S. Department of Labor handles these types of complaints. Their remit covers essentially every private company in the U.S. over some specified number of employees; sunfish is incorrect that the offense would have to cross state lines for the WH Div. to be interested. As a matter of policy, they might defer to Texas, but let them decide that.
The multiples involved in penalties can be 2 or 3 times the unpaid wages. Sorry, no, not 10x, 100x, etc…
The reason to go up the chain first, rather than straight to the government, is that it’s poor form to get top management in trouble with the government when it may be they just have an underling who has way overstepped his authority. It really is more professional to try to solve problems internally before going outside. Also, you never know who you’ll run into throughout your career, so avoid burning more bridges than necessary.
