I work in California. The company went from paper timecards to an electronic system over a year ago. A few months ago we go a new production manager. The new manager has taken away the rights of the shift supervisors to access the timecards. He has been editing the time so that everyone is clocking in at the top of the hour (stright up 8:00 for all) and out at the scheduled time, even if they have stayed a while to finish a job and would be entitled to overtime. We have no paper trail to prove he is altering the timecards. Everything is in the computer we no longer have access to. Is the company under any obligation to give us printout of our weekly timecard? Are we entitled to any record of our punches?

Legally, probably not. However, you can keep your own records, then file a claim for unpaid wages. Does anyone higher than the new guy know about this? I would report this to Human Resources. In effect, this is fradulent.

The HR person is useless. She backs him up on everything. I think she feels that is what the company wants her to do, or its less work for her, or she's just doesn't know the law. When he was taking people's vacation time and floating holidays without permission she told everyone it was no problem and they shouldn't complain. It ended up with a call to the Labor Board. When we weren't paid overtime for working the Saturday after Thanksgiving she told us that was correct because the holiday hours didn't count as time worked. Then we showed her our company handbook which states quite plainly that they DO count.

The only way we feel we can prove he is editing timecards and to get any action is to get a hard copy of our punches.

Cal. Labor Code 226 requires that all hours worked be printed on a pay stub. There is no requirement to keep a timecard. If you do keep a timecard, there is no requirement to show it to the employee. [Modified-See below for statement of the law]

However, I am not sure how they could comply with the law if their versions of the timecards all show 40 hours per week. If the check stubs show 40 hours for the week when more hours were worked in the week, then the employer is in violation of the law.

You can sue on behalf of the other employees provided that you have suffered some type of labor violation from this employer. That is, you do not have to have suffered from the improperly reported hours, just some type of labor violation.

The penalty for not printing the proper hours worked on the pay stub is $250 per employee per pay period. This can add up to a lot of money very quickly. As the plaintiff bringing the law suit, you are entitled to 25% of this money. The remaining 75% goes to the State of California.

Most electronic timekeping systems keep an audit trail of who and what changes were made to employees timecards

But it appears that they know who made the changes. It's the fact that the changes should not have been made, and HR is not addressing the situation.

We are experiencing something similar where I work. We do punch in on time cards but our manager rounds our minutes to the nearest hour

Its proving that it has been done that we are having trouble with. We do know who is doing it. Only a handful of people have access. If we just write down what time the clock said it was when we punched then we fear they will just say that we didn't write it down correctly. So nothing will get resolved and we'll be troublemakers. Thats why I was hoping we could force them to give us a printout each day, or maybe even each week (if we can get it before he edits it.) I suppose we can get the information from the timeclock server to show when and what edits were made. This would involve the corporate office back east, and thats a big step. No one wants to be the one who causes all the trouble.

You can't FORCE them to print it out and give you a copy. If you feel you are not being paid everything you should be, you can file a claim with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement for unpaid wages/overtime. Then the employer would have to prove that you worked only what they paid you for, and the audit logs would show edits, which would be questioned.

And, if you are fired for reporting either a complaint or an actual violation to the proper regulating governmental agency, you would probably have a good case for wrongful termination, also.

I am going to modify my position on this subject. The IWC Wage Orders provide that they must show you copies of the timecards. This is found in Section 7 of the Wage Order. The Wage Orders vary depending on your industry, but Section 7 is fairly consistent. Here is a link to a typical wage order: http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/IWCArticle4.html

The relevant sections read that an employer must keep "Time records showing when the employee begins and ends each work period." It further states that "An employee's records shall be available for inspection by the employee upon reasonable request."

I would like to thank the poster for bringing this issue up.

I will also address the issue of printing out the time records. The Wage Order provides "All required records shall be in the English language and in ink or other indelible form, properly dated, showing month, day and year, and shall be kept on file by the employer for at least three years at the place of employment or at a central location within the State of California. "

This would seem to indicate that the records need to be printed out.

So if the only time card records are electronic, and held in a server in Chicago, then that isn't legal either?

The DLSe has taken the position that electronic storage is permissible as long as the records can be printed inside the State of California at the demand of the DLSE or the employee.

The actual storage in an other state could present problems in that there is no way the company could guarantee that they be printable in California. However, this is unlikely to be an issue in practice. If they fail to produce the records on demand, it doesn't really matter where they are stored. If they do produce the records, then there is no harm in storing them in another state.