Docking Stipends

ccprchr · January 2003

We have seasonal employees that are paid a weekly stipend of a certain amount of money no matter how many hours they work. When they miss work, can we dock their pay for the amount of time they miss? If so, how?

Theresa Gegen TX · January 2003

What portion of the Fair labor standards act (which covers overtime) gives you authority to pay a weekly stipend (without paying overtime).

I don't think there is one.

I know there is a law that allows a daily rate to be paid in some instances, but I don't know of any weekly rate (unless the employee is exempt from overtime).

I am thinking that your company's intent may be to being paying the daily rate. In which case, you could only dock for entire days missed.

Good Luck!

Pork · January 2003

Theresa, Some of us are exempt from the FLSA as a virtue of being a farming operation. WE are not required by federal nor state law to pay overtime. We, however, have to be competitive with other employing operations in the area we,therefore, pay O/T. Because we do pay overtime, we therefore, must abide by all of the rules of the FLSA. We could stop right now and reverse our actions, but when we do we would be facing a mass "walk away"! Pork, "the other white meat".

patb · January 2003

I assume that you have an exemption from overtime due to the seasonal nature of your business. I'm not aware of any federal law that says you cannot deduct for absences, although I have seen this create morale issues either way. When I worked for a seasonal organization, we went to daily rates/stipends to get around this problem. Example: A $1200 stipend to work for the season (minimum 12 weeks) became $20 a day. We told our interns if you miss a day's work we will deduct $20 from your weekly amount of $100.

Docking Stipends

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