Confused/ Salary or Not

[mzavala33]

I am confused as to how my company is catagorizing me as an employee. I have only been here for going on 8 months. I was a temp for 3 months prior to that. I was hired (as I understood) as a Salary employee. It started when I became pregnant and missed days due to complications in my pregnancy and for the days I did not work It was taken from my paycheck and I was only paid for actual hours worked. Which in a pay period I was only paid for 13 hours. Now I am being deducted for hours missed because of doctors appts or things I have to get done and I have to take an extended lunch break. I thought a salary employee gets paid a set amount no matter how many hours worked. Am I wrong? Also, my company does not have a timeclock. They go by a sign in and sign out sheet which is not always accurate and not always kept up with. On my last paycheck I was deducted a whole day because the receptionist was not here to sign me in or out and it was assumed that I did not come in that day which I did.
One more question, they are so quick to deduct from my paycheck but I am not compensated for overtime that I have worked. I was told that the pay raise I got when I became a new employee would compensate for any overtime done and overtime was expected. Now that I have had complications thru out my pregnancy I was told that they want to reduce my pay and put me as an hourly employee because no overtime has been worked lately. If it helps any I get paid on the 1st and the 15th of every month.

[cbg]

You have not provided anywhere near enough information to say whether or not you qualify as an exempt (salaried) employee or not. (BTW, a non-exempt employee can also be paid on a salaried basis but only if they also receive OT when they earn it.)

But one thing is for sure, your employer is in violation of wage and hour laws. They don't get to have it both ways. EITHER you are an exempt employee, which would mean you don't get overtime but you don't get your salary docked when you miss part of a day either, or you are a non-exempt employees, which means they don't have to pay you when you miss time but they have to pay OT if you work more than 40 hours in a week.

You can ALWAYS legally be paid as a non-exempt (hourly) employee. They can pay the CEO as non-exempt if they want to and are willing to pay overtime when they work it. So technically, on the surface, it would not be illegal for them to change your status to hourly. However, they cannot legally go switching you back and forth to whichever is convenient, i.e. paying you as salaried when there is overtime to be worked and then making you hourly when there isn't. They also cannot switch you to hourly as "punishment" for leaving for doctor's appointments UNLESS they would do the same thing to a similarly situated employee who missed frequently because of a non-maternity, medical condition. They cannot treat pregnancy differently than any other medical condition.

I don't know how much this helps. Feel free to ask additional questions if need be.

[blake_shelton]

I think this helps me a lot but I would like to make sure that I understand this. I entered into an agreement with my employer, I work 50hr a week for "X" amount of dollars. Since entering this agreement I have worked under 110hr in our 2 week pay period twice ( I entered into this agreement in May) I have never been paid more then agreed for the extra hours, here recently I got ill and had to take 2 1/2 weeks off work only to have my salary docked. So the way I have read this post my employer is in the wrong and my pay shouldn't have been docked? If this is correct what can I do about this?

[DAW]

The starting point is to determine whether you are legally Exempt or Non-Exempt. Until that is known, it is not possible to get you a good answer to your question.

Even Exempt employees do not necessarily need to be paid for entire days not worked, and any pretty much any employee can be made to work whatever hours the employer wants. It is difficult to legally dock an Exempt employee for partial days not worked, which was CBG's earlier point, but which is NOT what you are saying happened to you. The only partial week exceptions are for the initial/terminal week of employment and if FMLA leave is in play (possible based on what said).

I am going to include two webpointers. The first is for the federal (FLSA) Exempt classification rules, and the second is for the Exempt Salaried rules which includes the docking rules.

Non-Exempt Salaried rules are generally 29 CFR 778.113, but those are basically going to say that overtime must be paid for hours past 40 in the work week, and that based hours not worked can be docked.

It is complicated and a pain to manage, but it is legally possible for a Non-Exempt salary to be based on more then 40 hours per week and to include implied overtime for those extra hours. Federal minimum wage is currently $5.85/hour. Your state (not mentioned) could have a higher minimum wage. Your employer would legally have to pay you at least $321.75 for a 50 hour week under federal rules. However, if you worked any time past 50, that would require additional OT (assuming Non-Exempt). This is a nasty calcuation for any payroll system to handle, and it is much easier mechancially to just base the salary on a 40 hour week.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/complian...irpay/main.htm

http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Ti...CFR541.602.htm

[cbg]

Blake, next time start your own thread instead of attaching to a two year old one, okay? Sometimes people don't notice that we have two different posters in the same thread and it gets confusing.

[blake_shelton]

sorry first time here and this thread was about the same situation that i am in