New OT calculation
Betzi
27 Posts
Our company gives employees a one hour lunch every day as part of their 8 hour workday - some take it and some don't. Historically, they would put hours worked as 8-4 and a 1 hour in the lunch time slot for 5 days a week. Doing it this way, they were able to have employees document an 8-4 workweek 5 days a week with one hour for lunch and if the staff person worked an additional 5 hours (anything over the 5 hours was OT) they were calculated as relief hours since they had the 1 hour documented for lunch. The company now wants to use OT for everything over the 40, regardless of lunch time taken or not. I am just trying to understand why our company would do this, knowing that the OT time will be much more than it had been previously since much of it was calculated as relief hours. Thank You!
Comments
Under the federal law, employees must be paid overtime for all hours worked over 40 per week (not 45 hours per week). There is no classification for a "relief hour" under the law that I know about.
The company may want to make the change to insure that they are complying with the law.
>fact working 40 hours already and should get paid for any additional
>time. Employees need to be paid for all hours that "they are suffered
>to work". If you make a lunch available and they don't take it, you
>have to pay them for hours worked. It sounds to me like someone in
>your company finally figured out they were paying incorrectly. Are
>you the HR person?
No - I am not the HR person. If employees do take lunch, however, whereas they are working 7 hours a day with a one hour lunch daily, doesn't that leave an additional 5 hours they could theoretically work before overtime kicks in? The scenario comes into play with a staff person who works 40 hours a week at a program (takes an hour lunch each day so really 35 hours) and then maybe works 5 additional hours at another program. Those additional 5 hours were coded as "relief" which is regular rate, not over 40, but separate from their regularly scheduled hours. With new scenario where the hour lunch is a mute point, those 5 hours per week would be OT. Does that make sense?
1) I was refering to non exempt ee only. Yes, I regularly worked thru lunch but I was exempt so it didn't matter.
2) Agreed, that any non exempt ee who works thru their lunch, including answering the phone while eating their lunch at their station must be paid.
If I understand Betzi, the concern is that an ee who DOES take their lunch everyday will now be paid OT even though technically they have only worked 35 hours that week. We got nailed on this issue by DOL. At the time, our time sheets did not have a "slot" for lunch hours, so people just documented 8 whether they took their paid lunch or not. EE A took their lunch everyday so for M-F had worked 35 hours. They then worked 6 hours on a Sat. Technically, they would have one hour of OT. EE B worked through their lunch M-F and then worked 6 hours Sat. They would be entitled to 6 hours OT because they had already worked their 40 M-F. Because our time sheet did not capture the difference, ee B was getting jipped out of the OT. It was certainly not intentional on our part, but when ee B was sharing with the auditor what a hardworking slave he was to the company, she caught the problem. We rectified it by adding the lunch hour slot on the time sheet (and paying back wages on three ee)
While we were jipping the ee, it seems Betzi's concern is the company is now going to be jipped as they will be paying OT before they are required too. They best bet, IMHO is to have a time sheet that accurately reflects hours WORKED. Sorry to get so long winded. Hope this helps.