I am in California on a federal govt contract. I am a supervisor, I as well as those that work for me, are salary exempt. My question is that often the job requires 50/60 hours a week, on the other hand there are days were we only have about 2 to 3 hours of work but corporate requires everyone to hang around the job site so we can log in at least 80 hours on our time cards.

My confusion is why is it legal or protocol to work an employee 100 hrs in one payperiod and only pay him/her for 80 hrs, yet if the opportunity arises that there is only 60 hours in a different pay period they must hang around to "make 80".

Employer can require or schedule work hours, but cannot make hours worked a condition of salary.

Being paid on a “salary basis” means an employee regularly receives a predetermined amount of compensation each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent, basis. The predetermined amount cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the employee’s work. Subject to exceptions, an exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work, regardless of the number of days or hours worked.

It's legal because there is no law prohibiting it. Sorry.