11/29/2023 0 Comments Punch clock with lunch![]() ![]() The more employees they have, the higher the wage rates, the more the employer saves by stealing your time from the electronic time clocks. Now you can see why employers will use their electronic time clocks to steal your wages. At $12 per hour ( Portland’s minimum wage), the savings are almost $100,000 per year. For instance, in the same example, with 500 employees, each employee averaging two days free work per year, the employer averages 1,000 days of free labor each year. Then if you figure out how many employees the employer has, you can see why this is so profitable. When you realize that you are missing 5-20 minutes per week, and you have already worked 25 weeks, you realize that you are due almost a full day’s wage. On first blush, you might believe that five minutes is irrelevant, but it is not. Usually, these alterations, whether manually performed by your manager or programmed into the time system, are fairly small. Obviously, this causes you to earn less money on your paycheck. For instance, an employee making $15 per hour could be due a civil penalty up to $3,600 where the employer failed to ensure the lunch was taken and did not pay wages due for short or skipped meal periods.īy altering your punch-in and punch-out times electronically, the number of hours you are paid is reduced to a number that is lower than the hours you actually worked. ![]() Where employers allow short lunches, or deduct for lunches not taken, the employer is liable for the unpaid wages, and likely for a civil penalty equal to 30 days of wages. This means that the employer is unlikely to be able to blame you for not taking the lunch, they must actually ensure that you do or pay your wages for it. Waterford case, the Court place policing of lunches on the employer. In fact, as previously stated in the Maza v. By adding a lunch where none was taken, employers are able to reduce the time they pay their employees and receive work for free. This situation arises where the employer pretends or assumes that you take a lunch and then deducts wages as if you did. Another way an employer uses the time clocks to avoid wages is by adding lunches that you do not take. In a recent case prosecuted by Schuck Law, the Court of Appeals found that the employee is due unpaid wages and penalties in this situation. Employers have contested this interpretation for years. If the lunch is shorter than 30 minutes, then the entire lunch/meal period must be paid. By law, a lunch must not be interrupted for 30 consecutive minutes. When you clock out at noon and return to work at 12:25 pm, you did not get a lunch. There are two primary ways that matter regarding lunches that can result in unpaid wages and penalties being due. This is true regardless of whether your manager told to start your shift early.Įlectronic time clocks can also be programmed to change lunches. The electronic time clock could be programmed to ignore any time worked before you were scheduled to start. For instance, if you are scheduled to work at 10 am, but your work it already busy, the employer could ask you to start early. It also allows the employer to program the time clock to automatically discard specific time from all employees. This allows your managers to go into your recorded punch times and manually change the time you start (punch-in) or stop work (punch-out) without your knowledge. What some may not realize is that the electronic time clocks often have sophisticated computers operating in the background. When time clocks are used correctly by employers and employees, they accurately track the time employees work and ensure the proper wages are paid. Now, most time clocks have transition from punch cards to an electronic time clock. The employer then used the times recorded on the employee time card to calculate the wages due the employee. The employee placed their time card into the employer’s time clock stamping a date and time on the employee time card. Older time (punch) clocks used paper time cards. Modern Time Clocks are Computers and Can Be Programmed to Steal Your WagesĮmployers have used time clocks for many years to track hours worked and calculate wages due employees. ![]()
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