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Exempt
Discuss employment-law issues such as family leave, overtime, disabilities law, harassment, immigration and termination.
Now that our illustrious leader has found out that exempt employees can work more than 40 hours per week-she's telling all the managers to make the employees work more hours or they are being insubord
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Exempt
posted at 9/8/2009 8:19 AM EDT
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Posts: 188
First: 10/11/1999 Last: 5/5/2010 |
Now that our illustrious leader has found out that exempt employees can work more than 40 hours per week-she's telling all the managers to make the employees work more hours or they are being insubordinate. That is not my understanding of exempt, non exempt. Please help |
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Exempt
posted at 9/8/2009 8:28 AM EDT
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Posts: 2146
First: 2/15/2006 Last: 9/14/2011 |
An employer can ask an exempt employee to work as many hours as needed to get their job completed. If the employee refuses, then yes, it could be considered insubordination. Now is is best business practice? Well it is going to depend on the industry, the company atmosphere, the employees and the amount of work to be done. Is it the best management style? Not if you have high turnover from burning employees out.
I find that most exempt employees EXPECT to work more than 40 hours some weeks. And in some professions, such as accountants, they KNOW that there are some months in which they will be working 60-80 hours per week. In HR consulting with 401ks, we were cyclical over a quarter...so it just depends on the factors above. |
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Exempt
posted at 9/8/2009 8:31 AM EDT
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Posts: 2146
First: 2/15/2006 Last: 9/14/2011 |
Sidetopic --> And this argument also flows back to your previous postings on whether employees are really exempt or not. If your company starts requiring more hours from those that you are wrongly classifying as exempt, then if there is ever a wage claim made/proven, the company WILL owe overtime wages for hours over 40 per workweek. So "free" work right now might cost you more in the end -- if it truly is an issue of defining exempt employees vs non-exempt employees.
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Exempt
posted at 9/8/2009 12:14 PM EDT
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Posts: 188
First: 10/11/1999 Last: 5/5/2010 |
this is as I knew, just needed reinforcements. sometimes I feel as though I'm not really in this world. Funny thing is, that our labor lawyer had told her that she felt we could be hourly( I have never been hourly in my life doing HR) so yes, we could put in claim for OT |
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Exempt
posted at 9/8/2009 1:12 PM EDT
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Posts: 3870
First: 2/12/2002 Last: 11/2/2009 |
"Could be" or "should be" hourly? There's a world of difference between the two.
Anyone can be hourly - an employee does not have to be classified as exempt even if she or he meets the criteria for such. You could make the CEO of GM an hourly an employee. But the "should be" is a very different matter. An employer must classify an employee as "non-exempt" if that employee fails to meet the criteria for exemption. I hope you're keeping documentation of all this, especially those noting that you advised the owner/boss that the employee should be non-exempt and paid overtime as may be appropriate. |
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