Business & Office Legal News

Business & Office News

Overtime in California: Employees Expected to Work During Vacations

San Diego, CA Troy D (not his real name) has been working for a wireless internet service provider for a few years and says that the company has a habit of failing to pay employees for overtime work. Many angry employees are investigating lawsuits against their employers, alleging that they, too, are not being paid properly for overtime work.

"I started with the company in 2003 and have been with them for about five years," Troy says. "I was hired on as a broadband engineer. I did the normal routine, worked hard and was a team player. The company was pretty successful and paid overtime back then. Then, management changed. After that, it went downhill. The company emailed us that it wanted the installation department to do comp time [where time off is provided in lieu of overtime pay].

"We started acquiring comp hours and tried to use them, but the company told us it was poor timing for us to use our comp hours," Troy says. "But, they wouldn't give us overtime pay unless there was an extraordinary situation. We had no contract regarding comp time and the company had no rules for using comp time. We all have a lot of accrued comp hours that we can't use."

As if not being paid for overtime was not enough of a problem, the company also expects employees to be on call 24 hours a day, without compensation. "If you do not answer a phone call on the weekend you are reprimanded verbally," Troy says. "They accuse you of not supporting the company and they give a lot of guilt.

"Overtime work depends on each situation and scenario??"technology is in a flux. Sometimes, you only work eight hours a day for months at a time, other times something happens and you're scrambling and constantly working. I took some of my vacation time last week and was called to work four times. It was easier to call me in from vacation than have someone from a different region take care of our towers.

"It is a typical mentality of this company. The do not care about their workers on the front lines and employees are taking the brunt of it. We are often told that if we don't like it, we should find another job."

Making the situation even worse, Troy's company says it has not been accurately calculating vacation time and is not allowing employees to use their sick time. "I had four weeks of vacation accrued and when I went to use it, the company informed me not to read the vacation time listed on my pay stub because those hours are inaccurate. They also have nothing actually documented to tell us what is accrued for comp time."

Troy says he is actively looking for another job, tired of dealing with employers who will not properly compensate employees for the hours worked. Unfortunately, this is a situation that occurs all too frequently in California??"employees are expected to work overtime without proper compensation.

If you worked overtime hours without proper pay, contact a lawyer to discuss your legal options.

June 25, 2008

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California Labor Law: No Right to Terminate

Mendocino, CA Mark worked 19 years for a freight management company; he was the second highest paid in the company. He was a faithful, loyal and hard-working employee yet last Friday, he walked out of his office in shock: Mark didn't have a clue that it would be his last day. Wrongful dismissal is a violation of the california labor law and Mark believes his termination was illegal.

In Mark's words, this is what led up to his termination…

"An incident occurred regarding a shipment that was supposed to be carriered (large shipments are carried, not couriered) to a customer—I was the logistics coordinator for the company. But the wrong carrier was used; it was a small shipment—six pallets totaling 2,000 lbs from Canada to the US. The carrier that was assigned to the shipment did not have a discount in place on behalf of the client and the wrong carrier was used because it gave us (which would be reflected on to our client) the better rate. I had no knowledge of the shipment—somebody else arranged the other carrier.

The client told my boss that they spoke to me directly about this shipment; they said that I told them our shipment is outdated and that is why the wrong carrier was used. I disputed that with my boss—I never spoke to the client. The shipment ended up costing about $3,000 more than it should have. We don't record incoming routing calls so anybody could have made that decision but my name was attached to the paperwork so the client just assumed that they spoke with me.

After this happened, I did some research and determined the options: we would be able to change the billing code and charge it back to the vendor who had a discount with the shipper; they would pre-pay and add those charges and send it to the customer. The discount would have been fine: everybody would have been happy with the outcome.

But my boss told me that the shipment had already been paid for by the client and there was no way to make any changes. During my investigation of this incident, I spoke with the carrier who offered to make the change and I was never told by the carrier that the shipment was pre-paid.

In the grand scheme of things, I think my bosses were looking for an excuse to fire me and they used this incident as reason for termination. I have a few ideas about why they wanted me out:
1. I was the second highest-paid employee in the department and getting rid of me would have saved them a substantial amount of money;
2. They wanted me out to leave a position open for family members or friends they started to employ—in fact they hired two friends of my former boss today.

On Friday, May 23rd I was called into a meeting with two VPs and a rep from HR. They sat me down and said, 'We have to let you go; this incident is the straw that broke the camel's back.' They also said it came all the way from the top—the decision was made by the owner of the company.

I was in total shock! I worked for this company for 19 years—I am 48—and I was a faithful, loyal and hard-working employee all these years.

To be honest, in all those years I had two write-ups against me; one for being too loud in the office—I was arguing with a carrier about their rate and defending our client—and the other issue was this: we did a rate study for clients and one of the rates was questioned. I was asked to research how the rate was determined so I called the carrier that gave the rate but they couldn't give an answer until three days later. So my boss wrote me up for not following up in a timely manner. I had no control over that.

To me it all sounds so petty—like we were in grade school.

I was not given the opportunity to question their decision. Right away, I sent an email to your lawyer at LawyersandSettlements and was told by my employer to file for unemployment.

And here is another thing: they withheld money from my bonus check years ago: I had to cancel a carrier 24 hours prior to pickup and the carrier incurred a $700 charge which was passed on to my company. That charge was then deducted from my check. That's not even the half of it. Another time they took $1300 from my check: I was legally within company rules but the customer who received the shipments refused to pay. A large freight cost was then deducted from the salesman's paycheck and mine. According to them, they checked with their attorney and they were within their rights. Were they?

Now I am obviously unemployed as of May 23, 2008 and my next step is to find out if I have any recourse."