Jun 24, 2009
Employers, if you require something—even taking breaks—shouldn’t you pay for it?
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Molly had a mandatory meeting yesterday during a mandatory unpaid break!
Unpaid breaks are inequitable and unjustifiable already, let alone with meetings.
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If employers are being coerced by the government to require breaks, shouldn’t the government pay for it?
A former employer took care of this: answer? our “Hidden Paycheck”!
We actually received a piece a paper quarterly that listed all the other “things” that add up to “additional pay”.
The name and premise provided much fodder for humor.
Pilgrim has a great point. A lot of the breaks (primarily for hourly jobs) are mandated by the government.
There is another issue. If one is paid for it, one is also taxed for it. The issue has come up that if a company provides a cell phone for work, unless the employee tracks every single phone call (i.e., personal or work), the entire bill is a taxable “benefit” (I must question whether it is a “benefit” to be tethered to the organization).
However, your point about Molly’s being forced to participate in a meeting during a break, I would not be surprised if that violates the law, unless Molly is a salaried employee.
The real issue isn’t the mandatory meeting during a break – the real issue is the idea of a mandatory meeting at all.
In my experience, there is rarely a time when a meeting should be considered “mandatory” since most are unnecessary (I once tracked how many dollars were lost to “mandatory” meetings and it was staggering).
It’s rare when you’re told anything of great importance, and even more rare that it actually affects your job.
But I’m a bit of a grump when it comes to those things.
“Meetings” are evil in any circumstances ;-)
My last “real” job before going into ministry had bi-monthly meetings that were off-the-clock and “required”.
We weren’t allowed to clock in before 8, but the meetings were at 7:15.
I bucked a little, until I found out that complaining about the meetings will get you fired… they’ll just claim the Texas “Right to Work” blah, blah, blah…
And on top of all of that, the meetings were pointless… meant to boost morale, but they were just patriotic pep-rallys.
I worked at a car dealership one time and you weren’t allowed to take breaks, that is unless you smoked. The smokers were always outside taking breaks and everyone in my department smoked except me. I thought about buying candy cigarettes or something just so I could take a break, but I quit before it came to that.
I’m weird, but I always enjoyed a good (or pointless) meeting at work. It provided me an opportunity to talk to people outside of lunch or answering email from my little work hovel. It was sometimes annoying that they came at inconvenient times, but I usually welcomed the interruption.
It’s the one thing that I’ve had a hard time adjusting to now that I stay home. I think I just miss the constant interaction of a work place.
How is it a break if she had a meeting?
But then I guess that’s the point of this post.
Insanity!
I worked in HR for 7 years. It’s illegal if they are a non exempt/ hourly compensated employee. The Texas right to work law has to do with termination and being an at will employee.
The Federal Law that classifies working status is called the Fair Labor Standards Act.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/hrg.htm
Bottom line, if you’re hourly you must be paid for anything work related, period.
When we have meetings at work, they’re done over lunch, which we get paid for. I would find it very odd if we were asked to clock-out for the time we were in the meeting, since it is work related.
Thanks Lori. You beat me to it. Hourly employees must be compensated for mandatory meetings which cannot be held during mandatory unpaid breaks.
When we do have meetings, and they are outside of our work schedule time. But we do clock in for the meeting then when it is over we clocked out. We do get pay for the meeting.
Some people abuse break time rules. At my current job, one of the employee at work who does smoke is a chain smoker. She goes out on smoking break every 30 minutes or so and on work time. She isn’t suppose to do that but to take break every 4 hours for 10 minutes break according to the company rules. I consider this is stealing the company money for taking too many unauthorize break with pay. This burn me up. I don’t smoke but can’t go out for lunch break until she return from her early lunch or smoking break. Because someone had to cover me at my work station. Someone can’t cover both work stations in different area. I clocked out for lunch break and clock back in when I am back to work.
At the old job that I used to work for, you will find a lot of employee leaving early to go on break and come back late from break. This is wrong! My boss had told them times to times but gone on the deaf ears.
Hungry to eat His Word,
‘Guerite ~ BoldLion
Other subject!
“Notify me of follow-up comments via email.”
You don’t have this at the end of the comments in your blog. I am trying to keep up with what other wrote after what I have wrote.
Can you fix this, please?
Thank you! Hungry to eat His Word,
‘Guerite ~ BoldLion
that’s redunkulous.
When I was the director of a nonprofit a few years back I ran into a similar situation. All staff members were required to attend board meetings, but then informed that it was to be considered our “volunteer time” so it would not be paid.
Using simple logic, I asserted the little authority I had and began entering the hours as “hours worked” on timecards. I pointed out that “volunteer time” meant we weren’t required to do it!!! They just sort of blinked, and didn’t argue the point. It was just that no one had ever pointed out the lack of logic.
And, by the way, all staff members had many hours of actual volunteer time each month aside from this.
Oh well. It’s getting to be quite common that “volunteers are paid”. It’s what I call crazymaking.
Mandatory meetings ought to be paid, unless one is a salaried employee or a volunteer.
Breaks are required by law federally. I have never worked anywhere where breaks are paid — because they are breaks. An hourly employee is not paid for being present but for some generally-defined work. When they are not specifically doing that work but are not working, they don’t get paid.
Making someone attend a meeting on their break is flatly illegal — WAL*MART has been sued and lost over that practice. It’s simply against the law However, I’d be willing to bet real money that if Molly brings it up, she’ll get fired. You can always count on unethical managers to take the easy and unethical route to solving a problem like this.
If not fired, at least shunned. That’s why I made sure with her it was OK to post this.
There’s already a crowd of I-lost-my-job-cuz-of-blogging people.
I’d hate to start the I-lost-my-wife’s-job crowd.
Have to praise a large employer for doing it right: my husband works at Home Depot. They have quarterly employee meetings (at 6 am on a Sunday!) for which they clock in and are paid.
Interesting side: employees who choose not to attend are not subject to discipline, but they lose two hours pay, since their work schedule was already adjusted to allow for them to attend the meeting with pay.
Was there free thumb size food?
The “large employers” have to do it right – they are lawsuit bait.
At WAL*MART, you do get 15 minute paid breaks, you must clock out for lunch (and NOT work!) for at least 30 minutes once in an 8 hour shift, and “working off the clock” is grounds for termination. If they aren’t super careful, they get sued – like Frank Turk said. They even had a lawsuit because some employees worked off the clock to get ahead – they chose to – because this created an atmosphere where employees had to work unpaid overtime in order to keep up with the productivity of the ones who chose to.
All that to say, it is the “little” employers who are more apt to bend the rules – they are less likely to get sued.
… I remember my employees punching for all breaks and lunches — swiping their badges there at the end of my reign of terror.
were they paid for breaks? That would have been nice of WMT.
The big question for me is just who is it who makes breaks “required”. Shouldn’t the employer make the rules and the employee decide whether or not they want to work there?
There is something about employees demanding things from employers that seems backwards.
Also, was this over the lunch hour and was lunch provided? If it was, then there was some compensation in the form of a free lunch.
No shame in leaving a company which treats its employees badly.
No-one where I work is allowed to photocopy anything outside of their break time. (Now photocopying stuff for personal use is not alllowed……) – so, the only time you can carry out this work time duty is ‘on your break’!!!!!!!!!
Also – NO ONE is allowed to go to the toilet outside their break!!!
I could go on……………
Management can require a worker to come to work without paying for the trip.
Management can require a worker to leave work without providing lodging.
Management can require workers to be clad without buying the clothing.
While we strive for wise, productive meetings and the minimum number of them, for relational Christians there are NO wasted meetings.