OKVacationer
New Member
I am a medical transcriptionist. I live in Oklahoma, but my employer is in Pennsylvania. They are a private company. I have been employed full time with this company for 5 years 8 months. I do not know precisely how many employees this company has. I have heard around 50 but then was told it was more than that but "less than 99." I do not know if there is a way to formally discover the true number of employees, as the owner will not tell when directly asked, and it is difficult to know because of the telecommuting aspects of the job. I am not physically around my co-workers.
I am paid by productivity. This is *not* commission. We are paid by cents per line, based on a 65 character line (including spaces). As an example, if I typed 1000 lines per day at a rate of $0.02 cents per line, I would be paid $20 per day. At the time of being hired, I received full-time benefits of health insurance, paid time off, and 401k. Paid time off was paid at a flat per-hour rate, calculated using a "given" of a 40-hour work week.
We are assigned primary and secondary accounts. There may also be other accounts; however, they are not usually considered the mainstay of income.
When I began my employment, I chose full-time employee status. Their definition of full-time employment was to produce a minimum of 10,000 lines per pay period. We were not required to clock in or out. We were required to fill out a calendar and place the number of lines per day that we proposed to produce and turn that in (e.g., 03/01/2013 1000 lines). We had a 24-hour window to produce our proposed daily lines. We were not paid overtime for any extra hours worked. Any extra lines above our proposed amount were paid at our base line rate. Period. I often worked 6-7 days a week. No bonuses. No incentives. But I did get to work from home, which is why I continued.
In March 2013 we were told that we must now clock in via an online virtual time clock. We were not asked to make a schedule or outline specific hours. Punch in when you work; punch out when you stop. I asked when our work week started and stopped, and was told it did not matter because of the way we were paid.
The second week of March, I was informed that my employer "lost" the account I worked on. There was no more work. I was switched to 4 new accounts and an entirely new work program.
Upon being switched to the new accounts, I started running out of work or work was only trickling in. This was across all 4 new accounts. Every day.
I contacted my employer and was told that if I ran out of work, I should clock out. However, I was expected to be available for work and then clock in when work showed up in my queue.
On 04/01/2013, this company lost another major account. A mass e-mail was sent out that employees for that lost account should attempt to obtain work from their secondary or tertiary accounts as best they could. However, there would be no guarantee of the amount of work available. Instead, the company was in the process of obtaining new accounts, and they would be willing to put people on a "waiting list."
Now, there is even less work or none at all. Yet we are expected to be available and hop on the system to type reports. If the work runs out, we should clock back out. This makes for very, very long days, as it may take 12-16 hours or more to get 8 hours' worth of work…. if there is any work available at all.
This same company has help-wanted ads listed with online job forums. When asked to be placed on the account for which the company has the ad, there is either no response to the request, despite numerous attempts at contact, or we are told that all accounts have their full assignments to ensure full coverage for the client, so they cannot keep moving transcriptionists around.
There have been no layoffs, though a large number of people are out of work.
There are online public forums where this specific company and specific situation are being discussed. It has been speculated that the company is not laying people off and is not providing them with enough work in an attempt to force people to quit, thus thinning the ranks. They reason that people cannot survive on the tiny amounts of work coming in (attrition?). If people quit, they will not be forced to pay unemployment. If people quit and file for unemployment due to low wages/work load, it has been said that the company disputes the claim, citing the offers of "future" work and job listings on internet boards.
I contacted my local unemployment office and was told that they could not advise me until I was "in their system." They stated this would also alert my employer to the situation, and the employer could offer me a resolution and knock me out of eligibility for UE, regardless of how many times I had asked for resolution previously.
In years past, my state had offered partial unemployment claims, but if I am reading things correctly, it looks like that benefit was revoked effective 05/15/2012. Link here: http://www.ok.gov/oesc_web/documents/2012 RULE BOOK.pdf
A fellow employee, who is a friend of mine that I referred to this company years ago, was told by a supervisor that as long as the company was offering us work, even if there wasn't any to do, and the company was advertising for jobs, that we would not qualify for unemployment. The company would fight the claim. She was also told that if our line counts dropped below 10,000 per pay period, that disqualified us from being a full-time employee, and we could be knocked back to part-time status, have our statuses changed to independent contractor, or listed as per diem independent contractor.
Why do I not look elsewhere? I have. The industry is dying. The job offers I have had are for wages less than I make now, and I have been told there is no guarantee of work.
Here are my questions:
Could a person file for unemployment if they quit in this situation?
Would this be a denial of minimum wage/theft of wages situation if we are expected to clock in and out depending on work availability?
Does being offered work, even if there is no work to do, disqualify a person from receiving unemployment?
Are there any other situations that apply here?
I realize this is long. Thank you for your patience. There is much more. I tried to hit the main points. Thank you in advance for responses.
I am paid by productivity. This is *not* commission. We are paid by cents per line, based on a 65 character line (including spaces). As an example, if I typed 1000 lines per day at a rate of $0.02 cents per line, I would be paid $20 per day. At the time of being hired, I received full-time benefits of health insurance, paid time off, and 401k. Paid time off was paid at a flat per-hour rate, calculated using a "given" of a 40-hour work week.
We are assigned primary and secondary accounts. There may also be other accounts; however, they are not usually considered the mainstay of income.
When I began my employment, I chose full-time employee status. Their definition of full-time employment was to produce a minimum of 10,000 lines per pay period. We were not required to clock in or out. We were required to fill out a calendar and place the number of lines per day that we proposed to produce and turn that in (e.g., 03/01/2013 1000 lines). We had a 24-hour window to produce our proposed daily lines. We were not paid overtime for any extra hours worked. Any extra lines above our proposed amount were paid at our base line rate. Period. I often worked 6-7 days a week. No bonuses. No incentives. But I did get to work from home, which is why I continued.
In March 2013 we were told that we must now clock in via an online virtual time clock. We were not asked to make a schedule or outline specific hours. Punch in when you work; punch out when you stop. I asked when our work week started and stopped, and was told it did not matter because of the way we were paid.
The second week of March, I was informed that my employer "lost" the account I worked on. There was no more work. I was switched to 4 new accounts and an entirely new work program.
Upon being switched to the new accounts, I started running out of work or work was only trickling in. This was across all 4 new accounts. Every day.
I contacted my employer and was told that if I ran out of work, I should clock out. However, I was expected to be available for work and then clock in when work showed up in my queue.
On 04/01/2013, this company lost another major account. A mass e-mail was sent out that employees for that lost account should attempt to obtain work from their secondary or tertiary accounts as best they could. However, there would be no guarantee of the amount of work available. Instead, the company was in the process of obtaining new accounts, and they would be willing to put people on a "waiting list."
Now, there is even less work or none at all. Yet we are expected to be available and hop on the system to type reports. If the work runs out, we should clock back out. This makes for very, very long days, as it may take 12-16 hours or more to get 8 hours' worth of work…. if there is any work available at all.
This same company has help-wanted ads listed with online job forums. When asked to be placed on the account for which the company has the ad, there is either no response to the request, despite numerous attempts at contact, or we are told that all accounts have their full assignments to ensure full coverage for the client, so they cannot keep moving transcriptionists around.
There have been no layoffs, though a large number of people are out of work.
There are online public forums where this specific company and specific situation are being discussed. It has been speculated that the company is not laying people off and is not providing them with enough work in an attempt to force people to quit, thus thinning the ranks. They reason that people cannot survive on the tiny amounts of work coming in (attrition?). If people quit, they will not be forced to pay unemployment. If people quit and file for unemployment due to low wages/work load, it has been said that the company disputes the claim, citing the offers of "future" work and job listings on internet boards.
I contacted my local unemployment office and was told that they could not advise me until I was "in their system." They stated this would also alert my employer to the situation, and the employer could offer me a resolution and knock me out of eligibility for UE, regardless of how many times I had asked for resolution previously.
In years past, my state had offered partial unemployment claims, but if I am reading things correctly, it looks like that benefit was revoked effective 05/15/2012. Link here: http://www.ok.gov/oesc_web/documents/2012 RULE BOOK.pdf
A fellow employee, who is a friend of mine that I referred to this company years ago, was told by a supervisor that as long as the company was offering us work, even if there wasn't any to do, and the company was advertising for jobs, that we would not qualify for unemployment. The company would fight the claim. She was also told that if our line counts dropped below 10,000 per pay period, that disqualified us from being a full-time employee, and we could be knocked back to part-time status, have our statuses changed to independent contractor, or listed as per diem independent contractor.
Why do I not look elsewhere? I have. The industry is dying. The job offers I have had are for wages less than I make now, and I have been told there is no guarantee of work.
Here are my questions:
Could a person file for unemployment if they quit in this situation?
Would this be a denial of minimum wage/theft of wages situation if we are expected to clock in and out depending on work availability?
Does being offered work, even if there is no work to do, disqualify a person from receiving unemployment?
Are there any other situations that apply here?
I realize this is long. Thank you for your patience. There is much more. I tried to hit the main points. Thank you in advance for responses.
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