I'm in PA, but I believe the applicable laws are federal anyway.
So I'm an hourly, non-exempt employee. Have worked at this company for a little over a year. At first no problem, because my clock in and out times were pretty much 40 hours a week. Then I got a promotion and my new position frequently had overtime. Not scheduled, but management was aware and due to the nature of the job we stayed until we were finished instead of just clocking out at 5 like most others.
I recently discovered that I'm being shorted on my paychecks. The company uses an app that gives us access to all this stuff so it's easy to compare actual time clock records to my paycheck. And consistently over the last year each pay is about an hour short. It's not exactly an hour, and it varies, but let's say the total hours reported on the time clock for two weeks is 98.675. My paycheck would show 97.583. Something like that.
I emailed HR about this. The response was, if you clock in a few minutes before your shift, and maybe you clock out at 5:03 or whatever, well those are not counted. You'll only be paid for your scheduled shift. First I've heard of this. I am aware of a policy that says we can't clock in more than 15 minutes prior to our shift start, but that's it.
Now the problem is this answer doesn't work. If I apply that standard to any given pay period then the total hours should be some nice round number, and should correspond exactly to my schedule. But it doesn't. The actual pay is higher than that, just about an hour short of the actual time clock records.
My understanding of time clock rounding is that it should be neutral over the long term. You may have a little rounded off one time, but gain a bit the next, and over a long enough period of time you'll come real close to breaking even. Yeah, well I'm losing time each and every check. And as far as I know if they are allowing me to punch in up to 15 minutes early, and out whenever I'm done and my manager says go home, then I should be paid for all the time showing on the time clock.
Oh, and they did mention about how you could stay late if the manager approves it. Well, right next to each and every day in the app there's a little line that says "manager approved this shift". Furthermore, I have never been told I was staying too late, or needed to punch out at a certain time.
So, legally, do they have a leg to stand on with their policy given that I can prove everything I've said here? I took screenshots of all my pay statements and time clock records. I should add, this is not an overtime issue. I'm getting paid overtime, we even have scheduled overtime right now. The issue is they're using the policy of "you only get paid for what you're scheduled to work" to try and justify shaving about 10 minutes a day off my time. And the math doesn't work.
So I'm an hourly, non-exempt employee. Have worked at this company for a little over a year. At first no problem, because my clock in and out times were pretty much 40 hours a week. Then I got a promotion and my new position frequently had overtime. Not scheduled, but management was aware and due to the nature of the job we stayed until we were finished instead of just clocking out at 5 like most others.
I recently discovered that I'm being shorted on my paychecks. The company uses an app that gives us access to all this stuff so it's easy to compare actual time clock records to my paycheck. And consistently over the last year each pay is about an hour short. It's not exactly an hour, and it varies, but let's say the total hours reported on the time clock for two weeks is 98.675. My paycheck would show 97.583. Something like that.
I emailed HR about this. The response was, if you clock in a few minutes before your shift, and maybe you clock out at 5:03 or whatever, well those are not counted. You'll only be paid for your scheduled shift. First I've heard of this. I am aware of a policy that says we can't clock in more than 15 minutes prior to our shift start, but that's it.
Now the problem is this answer doesn't work. If I apply that standard to any given pay period then the total hours should be some nice round number, and should correspond exactly to my schedule. But it doesn't. The actual pay is higher than that, just about an hour short of the actual time clock records.
My understanding of time clock rounding is that it should be neutral over the long term. You may have a little rounded off one time, but gain a bit the next, and over a long enough period of time you'll come real close to breaking even. Yeah, well I'm losing time each and every check. And as far as I know if they are allowing me to punch in up to 15 minutes early, and out whenever I'm done and my manager says go home, then I should be paid for all the time showing on the time clock.
Oh, and they did mention about how you could stay late if the manager approves it. Well, right next to each and every day in the app there's a little line that says "manager approved this shift". Furthermore, I have never been told I was staying too late, or needed to punch out at a certain time.
So, legally, do they have a leg to stand on with their policy given that I can prove everything I've said here? I took screenshots of all my pay statements and time clock records. I should add, this is not an overtime issue. I'm getting paid overtime, we even have scheduled overtime right now. The issue is they're using the policy of "you only get paid for what you're scheduled to work" to try and justify shaving about 10 minutes a day off my time. And the math doesn't work.