Office Quandries
Peter Rachleff
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PUNCHING OUT page 1 of 2 | |||||
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Weekly Answers to Office Quandries |
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Professor Peter Rachleff |
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A small company that I worked for in San Jose, California tried to coerce
its hourly employees into working "voluntary" unpaid overtime, citing that
it could not afford to pay us for those hours. Many of the employees in the
company went along with this and volunteered to work over forty hours for
free. This was mainly due to fear of losing their jobs since the owner was
quick to fire people who opposed him, understanding the "at will" nature of
the employment relationship in California.
I didn't go along with this, however, and over the next three weeks the owner and my immediate supervisor tried several times to get me to become salaried or "volunteer" ten hours a week in unpaid overtime. I simply stated that my job as a mechanical inspector could in no way be construed as an exempt position, and that if the company was not authorizing "paid" overtime I would be happy to clock off after forty hours and go home, as voluntary/coerced unpaid overtime is not legal. On the third week of this hitherto verbal "voluntary" overtime policy, a memo was included in our pay checks that specifically asked us to work "voluntary" unpaid overtime and to stay clocked on so that the amount of "voluntary" unpaid overtime being worked could be tracked. I clocked off when my forty hours was up. Two days later I was suddenly dismissed on a phony insubordination rap. |
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