Your employer may be violating the law in how you are being paid. They may not be paying you for all the time you are working for them. An employer must pay you for all the time you are required to be at the workplace during the time you are expected to be working, or when your employer knows – or should know – that you are on the job and working.
Pre-Shift or Post-Shift Work: If you are required to clock in and begin work before your scheduled shift start time, your employer may adjust your start time automatically to the scheduled time when calculating your hourly wages. Similarly, if you work past your scheduled finish time and clock out, your employer may adjust your shift finish time automatically to the scheduled ending time. They may do one or both of these using an automated time-keeping system that shaves time worked off of the start and stop times you recorded when you clocked in and clocked out. These actions deprive you of wages you have earned.
One way to figure out if your employer may be depriving you of earned wages is to take a close look at your pay stubs. If the listed total number of hours worked for the pay period on the stubs regularly end in __.00, __.25, __.50, or __.75, it is possible that you are not being paid for all of your work. Employees rarely clock in and out exactly on the scheduled starting and ending times. This practice of shaving can have a significant impact on how much you are paid to work for this employer over time. If you feel you are not being paid for all the work you are doing or have done for your employer, contact the Los Angeles employee lawyer for a free consultation.
Automatic Rounding: Frequently an employer’s computerized time-keeping system is set up to round the employees’ recorded clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest five, ten, or fifteen minutes when calculating the employees’ wages, resulting in non-payment for a portion of the time worked each workday. In some cases, the rounding is done such that, if the employee clocks in a particular number of minutes early, the system rounds the clock-in time forward to the nearest fifteen-minute mark; and if the employee clocks out early, the system rounds the clock-out time backwards in the same way. The result is the daily accumulation of unpaid work. The 30-minute meal period clock-out and clock-in times can be rounded in the same matter. For instance, if an employee clocks out for the meal period and then is ordered to clock back in and return to work 23 minutes later, the system may round the unpaid meal period up to 30 minutes. In this case, the employer has both failed to provide the required 30-minute meal period and deducted seven minutes from the employee’s paid work time.
One way to try to figure out if your employer could be rounding your work hours is to take a close look at your pay stubs. If the listed total number of hours worked for the pay period on the stubs end in __.00, __.25, __.50, or __.75, it is possible that you are not being paid for all of your work. Workers rarely clock in and out in such a precise manner, so it is likely that the employer is manipulating the time records to save on payroll costs. It may not seem like a lot of unpaid time at first glance, but over the course of your employment, this rounding can have a significant impact on how much you are paid to work for this employer. If it appears your employer is rounding your paid work hours and therefore depriving you of earned wages, contact the Los Angeles employee lawyer for a free consultation.
Meal Period Auto-Deduct: Employees who work more than five hours per day are entitled to a meal period of at least thirty minutes. Generally employers require workers to clock out and back in for the 30-minute meal period. However, many employees are not provided a 30 minute or longer meal period, but the employer’s time-keeping system may be set up to automatically deduct thirty minutes each day from the employee’s time record.
One way to check for automatic deduction of meal periods by your employer is to look closely at your pay stubs. A typical work week of five days, times thirty minutes deducted per day, comes to a total of two and a half hours of deducted time per week, or five full hours of unpaid work for a typical two-week pay period. If you are not receiving a minimum 30 minute meal period, and if the paid time on your stub appears to show a daily deduction of thirty minutes, contact the Los Angeles employee lawyer at our office for a free consultation.