Holding a paycheck Texas

[WorkerInTx]

Can a employer hold your weekly paycheck till your weekly expense report is turned in?

[Pattymd]

No. Having said that, turn it in when required and the issue goes away.

[WorkerInTx]

Deal is we have employees who are not turning it in after my boss has told them many times if you dont turn it in by Friday you wont get your check. I was just wondering if he could do that.

[Betty3]

Agree, is there a problem with turning in your weekly expense report when required?

add info - OP & I submitted ours posts off at the same time - I was agreeing with Patty.

[Pattymd]

Doesn't matter. The paycheck is due when the paycheck is due. The employees can be disciplined in other ways, but not by withholding pay.

[WorkerInTx]

Thats what I thought and was trying to tell him but he really dont care. Glad its not my check he is holding.

[Pattymd]

See Subchapter B here. If there were an exception, the law would say so. It does not.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.u.../htm/LA.61.htm

[DAW]

While I agree with everything said:
- The employer can have very good reasons for requiring expense reports be kept current. And legally, the employer does not actually need good reasons. Legally "my way or the highway" is a good enough reason.
- Agreed the employer cannot hold the check in TX, but the employer very certainly can fire the employee, hand out one workweek suspensions without pay for failure to their job (which the employee in reality is NOT doing), or pay cuts, maybe benefits cuts, maybe a lot of things. Employers can get very legally creative here. I have worked for a few that have been legally creative here. One of my fondest memories is an SVP who got a very public one workweek's suspension without pay for failures of his subordinates to hand in expense reports in a timely manner. After 18 months of pleading in very deaf ears that this failure was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars in billings to customers because of missing expense reports was fixed almost overnight by throwing one SVP under the bus for failing to do HIS job.

[Betty3]

After 18 months of pleading in very deaf ears that this failure was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars in billings to customers because of missing expense reports was fixed almost overnight by throwing one SVP under the bus for failing to do HIS job.

Did the SVP live?

[DAW]

As far as I know. I know that the company president kept making sarcastic remarks about the SVP, but he did that with everyone (including me). The SVP left the company maybe a year later, perhaps voluntarily.

I do know that there are very valid reasons for a company to want to keep expense reports current, and smart employers have many legal tools to inflict plagues of biblical proportions on miscreants. And only really dumb employers do things like holding back due pay checks.

[Betty3]

Yep - holding paychecks is "one" of the worse things an employer can do.