Bad Bargains
Posted on 05-Jan-12 by The Timekeeper
It’s funny. Employers will fight tooth and nail to keep unions out. But when they think they can maintain the upper hand, they’re generally all in favor of negotiating with their workers. Which, I suppose, is why they generally prefer to “negotiate” one-on-one with individual employees — where the employer can bring down the full weight of their authority to hire (and, more importantly, to fire) in order to “convince” the employee to “agree” to whatever the employer wants.
Some unscrupulous employers use their leverage to try to get their employees to bargain away statutory rights. The problem is, it doesn’t matter what kinds of “work agreements” the employer gets employees to sign… there are certain rights that the law says employees can’t bargain away.
For instance, as an employer, you can’t negotiate with your non-exempt employees about overtime. Federal law says you have to pay them time-and-a-half if they work more than 40 hours in a week. Even if you’d prefer to offer comp time or some other alternative. In this case, the law is the law, and it says you have to pay them time-and-a-half. Period.
Likewise, some miscreant employers might be tempted to try to save money by convincing employees to give up their worker’s compensation coverage. Or they might (wrongly) think they can cover themselves legally despite wrongdoing by forcing workers to sign waivers, promising not to sue and releasing the employer for all liability, before they can receive their paychecks.
Sadly, employees who are desperate for a job or who are scared they’re going to lose their job if they refuse, may well sign these agreements. Only thing is, such agreements are not only automatically void, they may also constitute grounds for a civil lawsuit or possible criminal penalties.
Bottom line, employees are entitled to their pay and other legally-mandated benefits (such as worker’s comp). Any sort of agreement that attempts to compromise employees’ ability to receive their wages and mandated benefits is illegal.
I know some employers ask workers to sign their timesheets or time cards to indicate their acceptance of the hours recorded thereon. It’s often used as a way of making sure employees have reviewed the hours and of getting their approval for the time being submitted for payroll processing.
However, something to keep in mind: in California, it may be a criminal offense to make an employee sign a time record you know to be inaccurate. It doesn’t matter if the records are inaccurate because you’ve “edited” them to avoid having to pay overtime… or if it’s because your employee filled out a handwritten timesheet with the wrong hours… or if it’s just because your busted old time clock can’t keep steady time to save its life… If you know your time records aren’t accurate for whatever reason and you make employees sign them anyway before you’ll process their paychecks, you could land in trouble.
(As an aside: if you’ve been wondering why and whether you should invest in a newer, more accurate time and attendance system — particularly a biometric system that eliminates the possibility of buddy punching — I’d say this should be all the justification you need.)
No matter where you’re located, asking (or forcing) employees to indicate acceptance of time records you know to be inaccurate is a bad idea. Especially now that the DOL has issued smartphone apps that make it easy for employees to independently track their time, compare their records to what you pay them, and report violations to the DOL.
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
