work 36 hour shifts, but get paid for 40 hours??

jbanda

We are a manufacturing co. in Texas, in one of our department we are running out of machines and space to keep up with the rest of production, so we are considerating to start additional work shifts, one idea was to run a shift that works 10 hrs. a day (Monday - Thursday), and another shift that works 12 hrs. per day, (Friday - Sunday),BUT THEY WILL GET PAID FOR 40 HRS. Can we do this? is there anything under the FLSA that I'm overlooking?. does anybody have any suggestions or alternatives?

thanks in advance for your response.

sonny

I don't know if this is exactly applicable but in another life I worked for an agency that gave us an hour paid lunch. (miss those days!) So we actually only worked 35 hours but were paid for 40. It only got tricky when it came to OT as we did not want to pay OT before 40 hours WORKED. We put lunch hour on the time sheets so it was easier to monitor.

mikicini

You can also treat them as salaried non-exempt. You are still required to pay overtime after 40 hours and keep timesheets, but you do not have to pay them by the hour. Of course, this leads to those who work 34 hours or 33 hours still can paid as if they worked the full 40.

System

The FLSA is only is problem when you pay employees too little, not too much. As mikicini said, you don't have to worry about the law until someone goes over 40 hours.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers