Commission pay
Jackson
18 Posts
We are a credit union in Tennessee. We have a separate subsidary organization that conducts service sales. The subsidary would like to hire some of our regular full-time employees to work for them several hours at night each week doing some telephone sales calls. They would like to pay them on a commission basis and have asked me if that is possible and how it works. Not having experience with that, I checked though my available reference books and it looks like they can pay them commission IF their resulting equivalent average hourly pay equals at least one and one-half times their base pay (which assume could be as low as minimum wage). However, I'm still sort-of clueless here. Does anyone have experience with commission-only pay for a service sales industry? Or perhaps where I can get more information. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
PORK
Jackson: Do a google: DOL and walk your way to commission as a wage and you will find more than you would need to know.
In that your subsidary came to you and ask the question could it be that there is a close working relationship to you? Which tells me that you situation might put your circumstance to close to the action and might cause your company to pay overtime for all hours worked over 40 hours.
I once was the HR for a Coca Cola Bottling company when I arrived on the scene it was in the spring and there was some activity going on with our employees working in the venting areas for the local University at different times during the work week days and nights. Our employees were getting a commission for sales at the vending operation which was supposedly run by the OPTIMIST Club. The more I looked into the situation the nastier it got! When football season came around the entire plant fellout for this activity and collected commissions from sales. That was an HR nightmare looking for a place to happen. The operations manager even had a position for me to man (I was able to decline I had a previous engagement.) I quietly went about the task of educating the owners and the senior managers and successfully moved the OPTIMIST club out of the vault and totally divorced from the company. The employees were not aware of the error of the bottling company ways and all those commissions could have been added to the individuals rate of pay in a 40 hour work week and a major adjustment would have been required of lots of back overtime pay.
PORK