Salary to Hourly Conversion
shtaffa
1 Post
I am a employee, not an employer. I hope you will help me answer my question.
I am the store manager at a small franchise retail store in Nebraska. I was getting a bi-weekly salary after I got the store manager position.
It has recently come to my employers attention that I am not allowed to be paid salary because I do not have 2 full-time subordinates (have 1 full-time and 2 part-time). First of all is this true?
After finding this out my employer converted my salary to an hourly rate. I was working an average of about 50 hours/week before the conversion. He decided that I should be working at least 54 hours/week and figured out my hourly rate based on that (salary divided by 61, 40 hours + 14 hours at time and a half).
My second question, is there any kind of laws stating what the number of hours should be in this conversion. I had heard that you should base the converted pay on a 48 hour work week, not a 54 hour work week.
There is another thing that has happened since this conversion. The store manager at our other location worked a total of 114 hours in a 2 week period (6 hours over the expected 108 hours). My employer made him edit his time cards so that it would reflect that he only worked 108 hours. This has got to be illegal.
I frequent this site often and all of the contributors seem to be quite in the know. Any help that you can give me would be much appreciated.
I am the store manager at a small franchise retail store in Nebraska. I was getting a bi-weekly salary after I got the store manager position.
It has recently come to my employers attention that I am not allowed to be paid salary because I do not have 2 full-time subordinates (have 1 full-time and 2 part-time). First of all is this true?
After finding this out my employer converted my salary to an hourly rate. I was working an average of about 50 hours/week before the conversion. He decided that I should be working at least 54 hours/week and figured out my hourly rate based on that (salary divided by 61, 40 hours + 14 hours at time and a half).
My second question, is there any kind of laws stating what the number of hours should be in this conversion. I had heard that you should base the converted pay on a 48 hour work week, not a 54 hour work week.
There is another thing that has happened since this conversion. The store manager at our other location worked a total of 114 hours in a 2 week period (6 hours over the expected 108 hours). My employer made him edit his time cards so that it would reflect that he only worked 108 hours. This has got to be illegal.
I frequent this site often and all of the contributors seem to be quite in the know. Any help that you can give me would be much appreciated.
Comments
First off, if the employer has decided that you should not have been an exempt employee in the first place and changes your status without changing your position, there may be some backpay issues involved.
Second, whatever basis he uses to determine your hourly rate, you should be receiving time and one half pay for any hours over 40 that are worked in a week.
Third, the fact that the employer "made" a non-exempt employee change his/her timecards is illegal. Non-exempt employees are to be paid for all time worked, regardless of whether it was authorized or not. If the employee worked unauthorized overtime, the employer should deal with it on a discipline basis but MUST pay the employee.
It sounds as if this employer is just waiting for a DOL audit. If I were an employee that was made to change my timecard and thereby did not receive pay for ALL the hours I worked, I would begin making some telephone calls.
For more information regarding the FLSA, see [url]www.dol.gov[/url].
Hope this helps.
Funny you should mention DOL audit, since about a month or so before this employer decided to change us Store Managers from salaried to hourly pay, he was audited by the DOL, due to inconsistencies in reportings to the DOL regarding my previous paychecks, all ending up in most employees receiving back-pay checks....
I am also going to try to produce copies, somehow, to show what changes I was forced to make on my time-sheets.
The requirement he has put in to effect is that as managers we can work up to 54 hours in a week, no more, and if we were to exceed that amount, time-sheets has to be changed to reflect no more than 54 hours.
It sounds as if you are following Don D.'s advice regarding keeping track of your time but I have one question. If you are being told be your employer not to work in excess of 54 hours, why are you? Just because the FLSA states that employees are to be paid for the hours they worked doesn't give employees free reign to work unlimited amounts of overtime.
One story that comes to mind regarding this issue is a friend of mine who worked for a large retailer. The company went through a DOL audit and employees were asked if they worked more hours than they reported, she answered that YES she had and guess what, she was terminated for not following the work rules.
If the employer schedules you to work these hours that's one thing but to take it upon yourself to work these extra hours may come back to "bite" you in the end.
As to the question of WHY I worked that amount of hours;
well...
At the time I was on salary, and had no cap in hours worked.
When it came time for handing in time-cards, my employer notified me that he was taking me off from salary and onto hourly, told me that the 54hour cap was to be in effect beginning with that pay-period which was represented by those time-cards that he forced me to edit.
So, at the time I was actually working those hours, I had no idea that for that pay-period I would have a cap on my hours.
While job titles aren't at all controlling, you are the Store Manager, not just an 'employee'. Determinations of exempt vs non-exempt are complex; for instance, you do not have to supervise 2 full time employees, only the equivalent of 2 full time employees (for ex. 1 full time and 2 half time). Do you have the authority to hire and fire, or make effective recommendations, do you assign work, adjust employee complaints, etc? Was your pay docked if you didn't work a full week? Do you spend more than 50% of your time doing the same kind of work as those employees you supervise?
The first thing I'd ask you to do is to attempt to discuss the situation with your employer. Do some research, like you're doing by asking this question, and then approach the employer to get the matter straightened out. Do you know for a fact that the employer made another store manager adjust his/her time card? If the employer refuses to address the issue, then is the time to start making those phone calls. Give your employer a chance to address the issues first. As employers, we'd all like that opportunity.
I have also been a district manager for a large rural oriented discount chain and in several of my assigned stores there were a small number who had a payroll of 80+ hours, most of the time 80 or less. The store manager was a salaried employee and the 1 full time and 2 part-time were all non-exempt
After a period of several weeks, review the log and your paychecks with someone who has a clear understanding of the Fair Labor Standards Act to see whether the law is being followed. If it is possible to reconstruct your hours worked during the period when he did consider you exempt, do that. It will help to have witnesses who can vouch for your worked hours and never throw away pay stubs.
Your ultimate goal is twofold: To ensure that you receive the pay you are due for hours worked, and to reach a comfort level that the boss knows what he's doing with worker classification, timekeeping and payroll issues.
He obviously either had you misclassified earlier or he does now. I am not fully aware of the job duties. The title is irrelevant as that is not the determinant. He could call you Senior Field Engineer of Retail Maintenance Operations/West Nebraska and still your duties might cause you to be classified as non-exempt if he had you cleaning ditchbanks in West Nebraska fields behind retail establishments. Depends.
Another decision you have before you is how much boat-rocking you can afford to do. I don't advocate letting him take advantage of your pay; however, you might not want to kick up so much stink in the corporation that you find yourself applying elsewhere.
These are the type positions that is one of the driving forces behind the change in the FLSA because many salaried individuals are required to work many hours of overtime doing "non-managerial" tasks such as cleaning up, stocking shelves, etc. Most of the complaints come from salaried individuals who are not being compensated for doing these type of tasks. Usually individuals who are paid hourly don't complain, although in your case, you could be due some back pay unless there were changes to your job description.
As far as the other individual not being paid properly, I would point that individual to the DOL unless I was responsible for him. I would not get involved in his particular issues unless I was responsible for him or had a duty to the company.