My brother worked for the city recreation department for several years. He worked 39 hours per week so that he didn’t get benefits. Except that he often worked 50. They even paid him for 50, but officially 39.
I worked at a finance company years ago. Our young just-out-of-college ‘management trainees’ would be in this group of non-exempt workers and I know there is no way the president would have approved one cent of overtime. Thousands of these employees would be told to ‘take a lunch hour’ or ‘don’t stay late’ and yet they couldn’t get their jobs done that way.
It’s law in most states that lunch breaks and rest breaks are required. There are severe consequences if this is not obeyed- even if it is the employee’s choice. California is particularly strict.
There are many undesirable employers out there. They do a calculation and figure that losing workers due to their crappy policies is cheaper than actually paying them fairly, offering benefits, having air conditioning in the warehouse, etc. Workers move on as soon as they can. And the government occasionally does something to try to make things more fair. I’m glad for that because unfair policies tend to be contagious between bad employers and that makes it harder for workers to move on and find a decent job.
Milton Hershey, Ben and Jerry, and the man who founded Costco would agree. But then again, they wouldn’t need the law.
D2 worked for a firm called Fund for the Public Interest. OMG what a terrible place. She worked, under the guise C of an Asst Mger , or something like that, position not getting overtime.
She worked 6 days a week for at least 10-12 hours a day. She had to work holidays such as the Fourth of July. She never got paid for holiday or overtime. And she was paid less than $25,000 a year in Boston.
She was expected to “raise” for the cause a certain dollar amount per week.
She ran across people who had lost their jobs but were supportive and signed a petition. But she was suppose to get money out of them. Downgraded as an employee if you did not meet quota.
This bill will knock them on their arse. Assuming it will apply to them. I certainly hope so.
I know it seems great to blame the all mighty bad company, but trust me, there are a lot of bad employees out there. Ones who do the bare minimum, ones who take advantage of these kinds of regulations. All these regulations suck the brains out of people and their ability to do right, whether it’s a business owner, manager or employee.
I am defending a couple of ridiculous, completely meritless wage and hour cases right now. This is the new thing. You terminate an employee for a legitimate reason, they go to a lawyer with an imaginary issue about race, sex, disability discrimination, and the lawyer says, “Forget about that. Let me see your paycheck. Oh look- it has a technical defect under state law. We’ll file a class action!” “Oh- and did you ever clock out a minute late for lunch?”
Unfortunately, it is the people (owners, managers, employees) who seem to want to do wrong who are the reasons that the regulations in the first place.
While in some cases it delays a new employee getting benefits like health insurance, I support the 3-6 month preliminary hire/probationary period where the person is in a trial period, and if they turn out to not be a good fit for the company for whatever reason, the ability to part ways is not cumbersome.
I think 6 months is far too long, especially if a worker is waiting for health coverage. If a supervisor can’t figure it out in a month or two, they’re not paying attention very well. It’s not like you’re offering tenure after the 6 months either.
The employers need to have a good evaluation and supervision protocol…and the supervisors actually need to use them.
I was chair of a committee that rewrote the evaluation and supervision document for our school district. We really sunk our teeth into the evaluation and supervision section of this document…and the administrators had to do the job. If someone was not competent and the admin did their supervision job (which included plans for job improvement if needed), it was not hard to dismiss a teacher from a job.
I would think this is the case for any job.
The issue we have seen…saw it with my kids too. Very little evaluation and supervision…therefore very little data to support anything.
If an employer has good supervision and eval protocol and follows them…there will likely be less issues terminating any employee.
In our state, the teacher’s union makes it close to impossible to do anything about non-performing employees. It’s a burden that the many, many good teachers shoulder.
It is always good to have good supervision and evaluation protocols, but employees who are terminated come up with all sorts of reasons as to why they feel their rights have been violated. We have a clear attendance policy in our distribution centers, but I have cases where terminated employees claim they have been terminated due to failure to accommodate a disability, due to racial discrimination etc. Then they decide they didn’t get their rest breaks!