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Question on salaried employment

gwelo62

Cast Iron
Joined
Sep 17, 2011
Location
ga,usa
Hello All

I posted this message on LinkedIn. No response!
Perhaps someone here could give some input.

Salaried employee status
My employer sent an email saying that if there was a shortage of work I(and others) would have to take vacation time to make up pay.
Question 1: I thought salaried employees were paid regardless. I work weekends without compensation. What am I missing? Loyalty only works one way!!
Question 2: When I run out of leave time am I free to look for new work or am I expected to starve?
Question 3: Will I owe the company for any 'sign-on incentives' that have not expired if I start another job?
 
From department of labor website:

Being paid on a “salary basis” means an employee regularly receives a predetermined amount of compensation each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent, basis. The predetermined amount cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the employee’s work. Subject to exceptions listed below, an exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work, regardless of the number of days or hours worked. Exempt employees do not need to be paid for any workweek in which they perform no work. If the employer makes deductions from an employee’s predetermined salary, i.e., because of the operating requirements of the business, that employee is not paid on a “salary basis.” If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available.




My take on that would be if you work any amount of time in any given pay period you are entitled to full pay. If you are out for a whole pay period they owe you nothing.
 
These are unprecedented times, so what has happened in the past may not apply. If you end up trying to seek relief through the courts, the backlog will be so long you will probably be old and gray before you get an answer.

I would expect at the point you are laid off sign-on bonuses would no longer have to be returned, but you have the fine print details.

Your employer may be the best company in the world, but if/when they run out of money you are still out of a job. If they manage to remain in business, a job with them, even with broken promises, may be better than looking for a new job along with lots of new unemployed.
 
This part seems contradictory, but the rules tend to favour the employer.

If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available.

Thanks for the info.
 
1) Yup, if you are of you are off. Weekends where part of your previous compensation. That was why you got paid the big bucks.
2) You can look for a new job anytime you like. Take a job and your leave time ends.
3) Technically yes, but some are waving that, in a small company you are probably SOL.

It seems you walked into this world from hourly with not a real understanding.
Bob
 
This thread seems unreal to me . . . here we have someone bitching about maybe not getting full compensation for a job when their employer (if they are like 90+ percent of employers at the moment) are likely headed toward insolvency due to near term or present realities of no sales, shelter in place orders, shortages of raw materials, customers who have stopped paying invoices, and employees who can’t work because kids are now at home, or they shouldn’t work because they are 60 years old or older and are at higher risk of death if they become infected with COVID-19.

If any of my employees came with a complaint like this, I would lay them off and send them packing to the unemployment office so fast their head would spin.

We have a hiring process that has been pretty effective at screening out people with an oversized sense of self importance and fortunately my employees have demonstrated nothing but the highest regard for our team as a whole and often look out for the benefit of others at their own expense.

Last time I checked, the US is headed toward an unprecedented economic crash combined with a complete overload of our healthcare system. Look out for your neighbor and stop being a whiny self absorbed idiot. No wonder no one on LinkedIn responded to your question.
 
This thread seems unreal to me . . . here we have someone bitching about maybe not getting full compensation for a job when their employer (if they are like 90+ percent of employers at the moment) are likely headed toward insolvency due to near term or present realities of no sales, shelter in place orders, shortages of raw materials, customers who have stopped paying invoices, and employees who can’t work because kids are now at home, or they shouldn’t work because they are 60 years old or older and are at higher risk of death if they become infected with COVID-19.

If any of my employees came with a complaint like this, I would lay them off and send them packing to the unemployment office so fast their head would spin.

We have a hiring process that has been pretty effective at screening out people with an oversized sense of self importance and fortunately my employees have demonstrated nothing but the highest regard for our team as a whole and often look out for the benefit of others at their own expense.

It is really out of line to make a comment like this without knowing some background. Maybe he just came off of a long stretch of 80 hour weeks while being salaried for 40 and figured they owed him some short work weeks or paid days off without burning any sick days or vacation. I worked at a big aerospace connector company back in the day that severely took advantage of salaried employees. The real screwed ones were the second shift people that were expected to attend all meeting which were always held at late morning day shift hours and the company was big on meetings. Since overtime was constant the only advantage to being salaried were pretty much the retirement benefits, but most didn't last long enough to accrue much.
 
It is really out of line to make a comment like this without knowing some background. Maybe he just came off of a long stretch of 80 hour weeks while being salaried for 40 and figured they owed him some short work weeks or paid days off without burning any sick days or vacation. I worked at a big aerospace connector company back in the day that severely took advantage of salaried employees. .....

Tough shit, comes with the job offer. Realize what you sign up for and do not whine when it goes otherside.
Bob
 
Tough shit, comes with the job offer. Realize what you sign up for and do not whine when it goes otherside.
Bob

Another A-hole response, you are a class act, not! Employees with a couple years under their belt that took promotions to salary jobs from hourly knew better, others did not. I was one of the ones who refused a promotion to a salaried job. As I knew better and I wasn't a career man anyway. There is no way a person from the outside could know what they were getting in to even if they imagined the worst.
 
I(and others) would have to take vacation time to make up pay.

Be glad you have the option at least!

Does your vacation and sick pay accumulate in relation to your actual working hours, or just based off calendar work days? I agree with Dualkit that a lot of salary is in place to simply take advantage of workers, but also agree with MG that when the whole country is gonna hurt hard maybe be glad that you even have a job with sick and vacation time benefits...as many do not.
 
The rules for salaried exempt* employees are weird and unintuitive. As I understand them, they can't dock your pay for less than full-day absences. They can, however, make you use your PTO, in which case you are still getting your full paycheck. After the PTO runs out, you are entitled to your weekly salary if you worked that week. They can, however, furlough you for a whole week. While furloughed for a whole week, they can't have you do any work.

Exempt Employee Furlough and FairPay Regulations Explained | Labor Law Education Center: Learn About Labor Laws in Your State

Over half of states have workshare programs to help with situations like these. The employer cuts hours and unemployment insurance pays some of the shortfall. Might be worth looking into and then, if applicable, discussing with your employer.


*Most salaried employees are exempt, and vice versa, but that isn't necessarily the case.
 
Not all places use salary to take advantage of workers but the largest company I worked for did. A place a friend worked at for decades did a lot of custom one-off circuit board testing machines. Due to a lot of outsourcing of machined components, they had as many engineers as machinists and assemblers. On a lot of the outsourcing, the machinists were reworking or replacing bad parts and the assemblers were inspecting and sorting them along with other duties.

Everything was a rush job, so there were often months of 72+ hour weeks. The machinists and assemblers were hourly, and this was the days of 1-1/2 time for over 40 and double time for anything over a 12 hour day or a Sunday. The engineers were expected to put in the same hours as everyone else and their salary was for 40 hours a week no matter how much they worked. The engineers would receive a bonus based on the time and budget the job was completed under. In the 15 years I knew that friend when he worked the bonuses ranged from $500 to $100,000. He said the average bonus they got was about $30k for about a 3 month project. He also said those were close to net amount checks, as they added 50% extra to cover taxes. Of course the salaried had no idea if there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or a lump of coal.
 
Gents - we are working with an Italian company on a machine for the paper converting industry - over the last 3 weeks they have gone from joking about something that was very isolated and being blown way out of proportion by the press to today having loved ones die, working shifts to limit the number of people present at any given time so that if someone gets sick they don't lose everyone.

We are in a different world right now - and bitching about salary versus hourly and whether the laws favor the employer versus the employee are like bitching about the desert options when the dining room is flooding on the Titanic. I don't care what the OP's situation is, we are all in the same boat and it is going to get ugly really quick. We will all be lucky to have jobs in 4 weeks time.

Time is better spent now trying to figure out how to soften the blow to everyone, not only thinking about how to maximize an outcome for yourself.
 
Tough shit, comes with the job offer. Realize what you sign up for and do not whine when it goes otherside.
Bob

Lots of people take a salary job based on what they observed when the last guy had the job. Job descriptions are typically pretty useless, and their is pretty much nothing that keeps an employer from changing the job after you take it.



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Time is better spent now trying to figure out how to soften the blow to everyone, not only thinking about how to maximize an outcome for yourself.

Tell that to all the people hoarding and panicking out there. There is going to be a lot of collateral damage caused by them, they are going to take something that someone else needs a lot more than them.
 
Lots of people take a salary job based on what they observed when the last guy had the job. Job descriptions are typically pretty useless, and their is pretty much nothing that keeps an employer from changing the job after you take it.



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And some of those people weren't promoted from within and had nothing to observe. They have to trust the job description and the HR people.
 
That was kinda harsh friend
Whisky Washington, mean spirited. Best to not jump to conclusions because the guy may not understand. Yet as MG mentioned they screen people and so giving the benefit of the doubt he gave his employees full disclosure and so the employees were told the details.
 
Sorry Mr.Guru I have to disagree. 'Salaried'is sold as 'you are better than those hourly-paid who are really just children(which is why you supervise them).' 'Yes they end up with more money than you because of overtime. But remember when times are tough you will still get paid.' Well that time is here.


You missed the point of the question in the first place. After I have used my vacation time what is my status? Am I still beholden to my employer or not?
 








 
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