Greetings.

My husband works for a small Biotech in So Cal, with less than 50 employees. He works in manufacturing as a production chemist and is non-exempt. Recently, his employer installed a time clock and guidelines went out yesterday:

1. Employees are not granted overtime for clocking in early.

2. Employees cannot leave early if clocked in early unless authorized by a supervisor.

3. Overtime is allowable if an employee stays for 10 or more minutes past the quarter of the hour. But only if authorized and approved by the supervisor.

I can understand 1 & 2, but number 3 is just wrong based on everything that I have read for the State of California. Can someone please explain to me what the heck I am missing and is this legal?

Thanks much for your time.

Basically, your husband's work has created a "no overtime without prior authorization" policy. It is legal. If a worker worked overtime that did not meet the policy's standards, they could be disciplined by the company. The law states that they would still be owed the overtime, but the employer would be able to discipline for the policy violation.

#3 is poorly written and confusing. It might be better for your husband to seek clarification from the company, rather than have us try to interpret it. I have some ideas on what they are trying to accomplish, but I would not want to lead you down the wrong path by accident. The key message is do not work unauthorized overtime.

Excellent and thank you for the reply.

So in essence, when it is time for my husband to be off, he can, by the company's insistence, leave before a project is complete due to no unauthroized overtime. In reality, that would never happen as my husband would not leave a project unattended as that would defeat the purpose of starting the conjugation. However, if my husband does not work 10 minutes past the quarter of the hour (an additional 25 inutes), he will not be paid for the overtime. If that occurs 5 times per week, that is about an hour that the company is getting for free. Am I understanding that corretly?

25 minutes is beyond the rounding factor allowed by the FLSA. If the company policy is that OT must be authorized before it is worked in order to be paid, then he notifies his manager/supervisor as soon as he knows that X work that is due today will not be completed without overtime. Then the manager can make the decision.