Hi guys, forgive me if this has already been posted. :)

I worked for a photography company in AZ up until about a month ago. The company I originally worked for was bought out by investors, and merged with several other companies. At the time, I made either 10$/hr OR 18% commission, whichever happened to be higher.

My problem started about two weeks before I quit. My then-boss called me and told me that our new company was offering a "raise" to the employees. The new owners were going to raise our commission from 18% to 24%. This was all she said, as far as our wages. This was about the end of July. August 4th, I got a letter stating that our base pay had been cut to 7$/hr with the aforementioned commission raise as of August 1st. (By the way, everyone who is still working there is not making anywhere NEAR what they used to make) Can the company retroactively decrease our base pay? I know this is ethically and morally wrong, but is it illegal?

Thanks for any input.

C.

It is not illegal to reduce your pay, unless you have a binding contract that says otherwise.

However, in most (not quite all) states, you must be given prior notice of the decrease before you work any hours at the lower rate. How much notice is required, is state specific - so is what constitutes proper notice.

That's the basics. However, I will leave it to one of the payroll people to determine what notice is required in Arizona, and whether or not the increase to your commission offsets the decrease to your base pay.

I can't find anything on the ICA site one way or another. OP, here's the contact info for the ICA to inquire.
http://www.ica.state.az.us/Divisions/labor/index.html

That seems crazy and so wrong to me. I could be working for a company at Xrate/hr and they could reduce my pay and not tell me till my next paycheck? That's terrible.

Thanks for the advice guys.

C.

I didn't say there wasn't a law in AZ prohibiting retroactive salary decreases. I said that I couldn't find one on the ICA website. Did you call one of those phone numbers and ask?

Sorry Patty, I wasn't talking to you. I was responding to cbg above who said, "It is not illegal to reduce your pay, unless you have a binding contract that says otherwise." I should have been more clear, my fault!

That still seems pretty wrong to me though.

I haven't called yet, but I will.

Thanks again!

C.

And I also did not say that retroactive pay cuts were legal. I said that pay cuts, in general, were not illegal.

Oh okay, got it now.

I got confused because we were talking about retroactive pay cuts.