Consumer Law, Warranties Can I have a clause in an employee contract that allows me to withhold pay?

Status
Not open for further replies.

bbrmediainc

New Member
I have a company looking to hire representatives in several cities across the country, we want to hire individuals with salary + bonuses, to insure we receive resumes from more qualified individuals. We have found that simply commission based inquries have been far less qualified than salary based candidates.

I want to know if there is a legal way to insure that they do enough business to at least pay for themselves. We want to insure, since we are unable to directly over see them in their city, that we get the results that we get at our home office.

Is it legal for us to say in their contract that they must at least book 10 events in that city, or the contract is void?

Thanks,
Chris
 
You can have a clause that they must book at least 10 events in each city or the contract will be cancelled.

There are NO circumstances under which you can withhold pay for work that was done, whether it was done to your standards or not.
 
Just to be completely sure...

Just to be completely sure, we will owe them the amount for the first month, but the contract will be void after that month?

If we are able to prove they only worked 10 hours/week, and the contract requires 40/hrs, can we dock them for the 30 hours they did not work? Or is a salary the absolute minimum they may receive, even if they do not complete any goals or work at all?
 
If you want to only pay them for the hours they worked, then make them hourly, not salaried. There are only VERY limited circumstances under which you can legally dock an exempt employee (which is what I assume you mean by salaried) and none of them exist in the circumstances you are describing. Note that if you go the hourly route, it is YOUR responsibility to know and keep track of EXACTLY how many hours are worked, to be certain that EVERY hour worked is paid for and to pay overtime at the rate of time and a half for any hours over 40 in a work week. You will be in violation of the law if you do not do this. There is NO way around it.

Let me make it clear. There are NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER under which it is legal to refuse to pay for time actually worked. If you want a clause in there that terminates the contract if they do not do x amount of business, there is nothing in the law that will prevent that, but you will still be on the hook for their FULL salary (or EVERY hour worked including overtime) for the time prior to the end of the contract.

You are walking a very, very fine line between legal and illegal as it is so I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you have an attorney draw up these contracts and you do NOT do it yourself.
 
Thanks,

I appreciate all your help. Of course we will have an attorney write up these contracts.

Although, I am not too worried, I wanted to clarify. I appreciate your prompt response and will be coming back the thelaw.com for any additional help.

Thanks!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top