Salaried employees, lunch breaks & time clock punching

[MyJobBlows]

I have a question that is two-fold. First, I'm a salaried employee who works for a company that has had the brilliantly demoralizing idea to force all of us (except management) to use an automated time clock to punch in and out. I'm concerned about having my paycheck docked if I'm ever late, or when I'm unable to clock in when I get to work due to computer problems that are in no way my fault. Can my employer legally dock my pay for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, even though I'm not paid by the hour?

Secondly, is it typical or ATYPICAL for employers who only give their full-time employees 30 minutes for lunch to make them clock out for that half-hour? I've worked full time for more than 15 years and in all that time, my experience has been that hour-long lunches are unpaid, but employers that only allow lunch breaks to be 30 minutes long have kept me on the clock and paid me for that half hour, thus considering a schedule of 9-5 as fulfilling their 8-hour workday requirement. My employer has been strong-arming my coworkers and myself to punch out for lunch so that they don't have to pay us for it and while I don't doubt the legality of this policy, I'm just curious if what I've experienced prior to taking the position with my current employer is standard, or if what my current employer enforces is less the exception and more the general rule.

Thanks!

[cbg]

Salaried is only a pay method. What matters is if you are exempt or non-exempt.

If you are non-exempt, you never have to be paid for time you do not work. That includes docking you for five or ten minutes if you are late.

If you are exempt, the only time you can legally be docked for partial day increments is if the time you miss is attributable to FMLA.

In my experience, your previous experience is the exception; your current employer's policy is the rule.

[Pattymd]

the brilliantly demoralizing idea to force all of us (except management) to use an automated time clock to punch in and out.

It's only "demoralizing" if you let it be. There are perfectly good reasons for this policy and it, more than likely, has nothing to do with you personally, nor is it a "put-down" because you are "lesser" than management. That's a overly sensitive reaction, in my opinion.

[MyJobBlows]

It's only "demoralizing" if you let it be.

Were it only as simple as "choosing" not to let it bother us. I'm not alone in my sense of demoralization about this - everyone in my office, my manager included, is offended by not only the implication that we can't be trusted to continue to manually document our hours, but also by the clumsy and unprofessional way in which the new policy has been rolled out & administered. The company's sole HR person alluded to a meeting in which the timeclock policy was introduced and discussed with the employees in the main office, but none of the staff or management in my office were made aware of the meeting, or given the opportunity to express our concerns about this new policy, as the employees in the main office were. In administering the time keeping software, the HR person has been so heavy-handed that she actually sent me an email, the body of which was a message to the company's CEO about me, which was accusatory, sarcastic and written in a tone of utter disrespect for the CEO. I learned later that she had never sent that email to the company's CEO - she'd merely sent it to me in an effort to dupe me into thinking that she'd sent it to the CEO. That clearly wasn't done boost morale, or with any good intentions whatsoever. It was, by all accounts, deliberately demoralizing - not to mention egregiously juvenile and unprofessional.

Despite what corporate mouth-pieces claim, people don't always get to choose how they feel about certain events. Some reactions are just inherently human reflexes that employers who don't view their employees as human beings first, consider to be unacceptable. So yes, as human beings, my entire office has been demoralized by all of this - and if that comes as a shock to those who botched the implementation of this new policy, that's a reflection of how out-of-touch they are, more than it is "proof" of rebellious employees.

[ElleMD]

Maybe so, but your attitude in your posts is anything but professional and reasonable. It is perfectly legal to have timeclocks and is in fact very common. Half hour unpaid lunches are also the norm. If it upsets you that much, you are more than welcome to apply for jobs at companies with policies more to your liking. If you are convinced that this employer is offering so much worse a deal than any other, then go work someplace else. What this employer is doing is perfectly legal so you can't force them to change.

[MyJobBlows]

your attitude in your posts is anything but professional and reasonable

I don't mean this facetiously in the least, but I genuinely don't see what's unreasonable or unprofessional about my posting. Is it unreasonable of the employees in my office to be upset about not being kept in the loop about new policies that impact us, the way that the employees in the main office were? Is it unprofessional of me to be appalled by the deliberately deceitful shenanigans of my company's HR person? I used no expletives, didn't express my personal feelings about the HR person, herself - only that I consider her actions to have been lacking in maturity and good judgment. The "attitude" that I've demonstrated in my posts is merely one of disappointment in the way that the implementation of this new policy was handled. Even my direct supervisor doesn't consider my expressed opinions on the subject of the HR person's misconduct to be born of an unreasonable, or unprofessional attitude, so I must vehemently disagree with that characterization.

Lastly, I hope that any further posts in this thread can be more focused on the topic and less focused on criticizing the individual who posted it.

[ScottB]

I'm concerned about having my paycheck docked if I'm ever late, or when I'm unable to clock in when I get to work due to computer problems that are in no way my fault. Can my employer legally dock my pay for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, even though I'm not paid by the hour?

If you are exempt, you don't have to worry about your pay being docked for being late. You could be disciplined, but you can try to explain that the time clock was wrong.

Secondly, is it typical or ATYPICAL for employers who only give their full-time employees 30 minutes for lunch to make them clock out for that half-hour?

"Only" thirty minutes? Sweat shop. Don't work there.

You are really, really upset about HR making "salaried" employees punch time clocks (I reviewed your first post under a different subject). I suggest you either get over it or get a new job.