Hello,
I am posting on behalf of my wife, who works for a local police department. In January of this year, the department conducted an audit, and found that 20+ employees had "misappropriated leave", by filling out time sheets incorrectly (primarily by recording reporting to work on days that they did not actually report), and thus were paid wages for hours worked instead of having leave hours deducted from available leave time. The procedure for recording time for this department is as follows:
1. Employee fills out a paper time sheet bi-weekly
2. Employee also completes an online time sheet
3. Supervisors keep a daily written record of attendance by taking roll-call at the beginning of each shift
4. Both employee recorded time sheets are submitted at the same time
5. A supervisor reviews both the time sheets submitted by the employee, and the daily roll-call records, and then either approves or rejects the time recorded
6. If approved, the supervisor forwards the time sheet to the payroll department, or rejects it so that the employee can make corrections and resubmit
The auditors found that there were discrepancies between what was entered/submitted by the employees between their written time sheets and their online time sheets. Again, this submitted information was supposedly reviewed by the respective supervisors before being forwarded to the payroll department. The department is now stating they are going to be deducting pay from the officers' next several pay checks to compensate for this misappropriated time
The department sent a letter to the employees being accused of this misappropriation of time. My wife received the letter in mid February with the auditors' findings indicating she was found to have incorrectly recorded time for a total of five non-consecutive days, equal to one 40 hour work week. Today, she received an email from the payroll department indicating that she would have $287.17 deducted from each of her next four paychecks, for a total of $1148.68, which is almost exactly what her net pay is for one paycheck for 80 hours worked. In other words, they are deducting approximately twice the amount of time that she was notified she had misappropriated (not calculating for gross vs. net). She has not been notified of discovery of any additional misappropriated time.
My wife has requested to be allowed to review the original paper time sheets that she submitted to confirm the validity of the department's claims, but has not yet been allowed to do so. She has made this request several times.
Now, if it were just my wife, or just a few people, I could maybe see their reasoning, which is that employees were purposely filling out their time incorrectly to 'cheat the system'. But with over 20 officers being accused of this, and considering the fact that all time sheets MUST be approved by the supervisor before finally being submitted to payroll, it seems more likely that there is either some flaw in their procedure or system for recording or reviewing time, or that the instructions that were given to the officers (and possibly the supervisors) were inaccurate or incomplete.
Does the company legally have the right to deduct these funds from the officers' paychecks? Is there grounds for any type of legal action or maybe even a class action suit?
I am posting on behalf of my wife, who works for a local police department. In January of this year, the department conducted an audit, and found that 20+ employees had "misappropriated leave", by filling out time sheets incorrectly (primarily by recording reporting to work on days that they did not actually report), and thus were paid wages for hours worked instead of having leave hours deducted from available leave time. The procedure for recording time for this department is as follows:
1. Employee fills out a paper time sheet bi-weekly
2. Employee also completes an online time sheet
3. Supervisors keep a daily written record of attendance by taking roll-call at the beginning of each shift
4. Both employee recorded time sheets are submitted at the same time
5. A supervisor reviews both the time sheets submitted by the employee, and the daily roll-call records, and then either approves or rejects the time recorded
6. If approved, the supervisor forwards the time sheet to the payroll department, or rejects it so that the employee can make corrections and resubmit
The auditors found that there were discrepancies between what was entered/submitted by the employees between their written time sheets and their online time sheets. Again, this submitted information was supposedly reviewed by the respective supervisors before being forwarded to the payroll department. The department is now stating they are going to be deducting pay from the officers' next several pay checks to compensate for this misappropriated time
The department sent a letter to the employees being accused of this misappropriation of time. My wife received the letter in mid February with the auditors' findings indicating she was found to have incorrectly recorded time for a total of five non-consecutive days, equal to one 40 hour work week. Today, she received an email from the payroll department indicating that she would have $287.17 deducted from each of her next four paychecks, for a total of $1148.68, which is almost exactly what her net pay is for one paycheck for 80 hours worked. In other words, they are deducting approximately twice the amount of time that she was notified she had misappropriated (not calculating for gross vs. net). She has not been notified of discovery of any additional misappropriated time.
My wife has requested to be allowed to review the original paper time sheets that she submitted to confirm the validity of the department's claims, but has not yet been allowed to do so. She has made this request several times.
Now, if it were just my wife, or just a few people, I could maybe see their reasoning, which is that employees were purposely filling out their time incorrectly to 'cheat the system'. But with over 20 officers being accused of this, and considering the fact that all time sheets MUST be approved by the supervisor before finally being submitted to payroll, it seems more likely that there is either some flaw in their procedure or system for recording or reviewing time, or that the instructions that were given to the officers (and possibly the supervisors) were inaccurate or incomplete.
Does the company legally have the right to deduct these funds from the officers' paychecks? Is there grounds for any type of legal action or maybe even a class action suit?
