Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9403290179
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Laurie Aucoin KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Take your bookkeeper, Alice. She usually arrives at 7:30 a.m., although the workday doesn't really begin until 8, and stays until at least 5:30 p.m. She's frugal, so she eats a sandwich at her desk instead of going out to lunch.
While she's sitting there, calls come in. She handles them.
Your company doesn't encourage overtime work and doesn't offer overtime pay. And Alice? Well, that's just her schedule. She doesn't complain, so it's not a problem. Right? Wrong.
"You're on the hook if this employee is ever let go," said Dan Bremer, director of the Atlanta wage and hour division of the Department of Labor, during a recent wage seminar.
"Alice will file a complaint that she was so hard-working and was never compensated for those extra hours," Bremer said. "You may be stuck paying for two years' worth of overtime hours."
The bottom line? "Limit your liabilities," Bremer stressed over and over in his flip-chart presentation.
Seminar participants, fervently taking notes, said they know how important these liabilities can be. A few brought up examples of how they had gotten burned in the past; others said they felt reassured that they were in compliance with the laws.
"Most of what we're doing is in line with what he's saying," said Ruby Price, payroll manager with Total System Services Inc. "We felt really good [afterward] about what we've been doing for the last several years."
With employees like Alice, Bremer pointed out, managers need to clarify that they don't want employees working overtime, period.
"Tell them if they arrive early, to stay away from the phones and the copy machines. Tell them to get some coffee and read the newspaper in the break room. Tell them not to eat lunch at their desks," Bremer said with a touch of humor. "It will get it dirty anyway."
Overtime pay is a big stickler for many businesses, accounting for a chunk of the 700 to 900 phone calls Bremer's office receives each day.
"If you ask anyone on the street what overtime is, they will quickly tell you: time and a half after 40 hours," Bremer noted. "But if you ask some employers that same question, you don't always get a straight answer."
This doesn't always mean the employer is dishonest, however. Gray areas can crop up everywhere from working lunches to breaks to travel time.
And this leads to confusion for everyone.
In some cases, employers may be pinching pennies - at the employees' expense. One company Bremer knows of required employees to take courses on their own time and pay for them with their own money.
"This is wrong," Bremer said, explaining that if a skill is mandatory, the company must pay for employee training.
In the same vein, if employees are talking about work-related issues over an employer-sponsored lunch, they must be paid for that hour. If they are loading tools for a job in a city an hour away, the employer is required by law to pay for all of that time.
"Overtime is not a benefit to employees; it's a penalty to employers," Bremer said.
The government would prefer that companies hire another couple of people to work the hours piled onto current employees, he noted.
But sometimes it is cheaper for a company to pay overtime than to hire new people and pay them benefits.
In some cases, employers find it cheaper to bypass overtime altogether and opt for compensatory time for extra hours worked. Another no-no.
"Comp time is illegal," Bremer said matter-of-factly. With the exception of state and local government employees, any worker who surpasses 40 hours a week must either be paid time and a half or take time off within the same week, he explained.
This legality doesn't have to leave employers in a bind, Bremer said.
If, for example, Friday is the busiest day for a company, managers can start the workweek on Friday. Then, on the following Monday or Tuesday, they can let employees off early to compensate for the 12 hours worked Friday.
What about those salaried people whom employers can work 100 hours a week if they wish? Comp time is awarded to them only at the mercy of the employer.
"This is a management decision, not a law decision," Bremer said.
But employers should watch whom they label exempt.
Exempt employees fall into three categories: supervisors; administrators; and professionals, such as attorneys and physicians.
To be exempt, employees must be paid a guaranteed salary from week to week. While employers can pile hours' worth of work on exempt employers for no extra compensation, they also cannot dock pay during a week they only work 35 hours, Bremer said.
"In general, exempt employees must be management in nature," he said. "Make sure everyone who is exempt really is. If not, it could hurt you later."
by CNB