Hi everyone. This question is pertaining to my girlfriend's employer. She holds a job in, of course, Ohio. They have been doing this with various employees, and not just her. As a requirement to be employed at this small business, they make their employees sign a form that state all register shortages will come out of their pay. They have "deducted" wages from many of their employees in the past... needless to say, this place has a very high turnover rate.

The other day, an incident occurred where a patron ran out of the building without paying for their goods. The total was about $104 dollars. She was told that she would have her wages deducted for this.

Is this legal? I can't imagine that it's legal to deduct from employee's pay for this. Even though it "technically" it is a register shortage, it is in no fault hers that someone decided to steal a product.


To go more into what the $104 dollar cost was... this place of business is a veterinary clinic. That amount of money deducted included mostly labor charges, and a medication plus markup charge. Again, most of this money deducted was either profit and/or labor charge....which in my eyes would probably be considered profit, too.

Your state is not my state, so I cannot address OH specific issues. States can and sometimes do have rules more favorable to the employee then the federal rules. Perhaps another responder knows the OH rules.

I can address federal law (FLSA) rules on this issue. What you describe might be legal, or not, depending on the implementation. This is what the feds call a "for the benefit of the employer" deduction, meaning that it is legal only to the extent that minimum wage and overtime is not impacted.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs16.pdf

To my knowledge, Ohio has no specific laws regarding deductions from pay. At least there is nothing addressing it on the state DOL website.

That is one reason that I avoid answering questions specific to states that I do not live/work in. If I try looking up the answer and cannot find it, does it mean that there is no rule, or just that I cannot find the rule. Some states are really bad at communicating their rules.

What I have re Ohio is:

Employees may authorize deductions from their paychecks. Employers become the trustees for any deducted funds and must forward them to the authorized recipient within 30 days.

Employers and employees may agree to deductions for wares, tools, or machinery damaged by employees, but employee must specifically authorize any deduction. Employers can't make that type of deduction from employees younger than 18.

Ohio Rev. code 4113.15

Since there is no seemingly direct law, it seems, (which is crazy to me that I live in a state which doesn't directly address such an egregious breaking of the law) does this leave a greater amount of leeway to the judicial system? As in, would taking them to small claims court be the next logical move, or should there be some sort of department of labor filing she should make? On one hand, its ONLY $104 dollars, yet its also an unfair taking of $104 dollars from our point of view.

I'd call the state DOL first. If they tell you they follow federal law on this, then DAW's discussion points would apply.

I'm not so sure this is some egregious violation of law.

I guess you could try small claims with a reason of "violation of public policy", but I wouldn't be overly optimistic.

If we are talking federal rules only, then arguably the deduction would be limited to actual costs only, not add on profit.

Couldn't you argue in court it being "theft", too? As in, someone steals from person A so they steal from person B? Yeah, its an employer.. but, at this point, couldn't you argue it being nothing more than them stealing from an employee to make back what was stolen from them?

Just because they feel they can "itemize" it on a paycheck in an official way, doesn't make the act itself any less of theft... or so one could argue in the courts. Anyone else agree/disagree?

Maybe. I have no idea what a judge would decide.

We have an actual federal law (FLSA) that says deducting for register shortage is legal (with certain restrictions). This is 1930s law, with 70 years of court decisions that do not agree you. However you can of course make any argument you want in court.

May I ask if you have read the factsheet I cited earlier? I can also cite the actual regulations if you prefer.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_531/Subpart_C.htm