Ca - from salary to hourly and drive time

[wesawitbleed]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

My husband works for a company that is very popular in the gaming entertainment. earlier this year an employee had quit and wrote off a mass hate email to everybody in the company. he filed a complaint with the department of labor and they investigated. the DOL claimed there were no law violations but it would be better to change the particular employees to hourly instead of remaining salary.

my husbands job consists of driving in the company leased vehicle. he is to maintain machines, keep them stocked, clean, and deal with any customer problems.

our dilemma is his drive time. they will only pay him from the time he arrives at his first location and done with his last. his drive time can be as long as 2 hours to his first location. and since he is mainly on call if a problem arises at locations he won't be paid for driving and he may only be there for a few minutes to an hour. instead of being paid for 40 hours as salary he now will only be paid close to 30 hours with the change.

I already know other employees in the same boat will complain but since they work in different states the labor laws may differ. since he has a company vehicle can they really only pay him when he gets to his first and last location and not his drive time before and after?

any advice/help would be very appreciated.

 

[Dougthegreat]

I think there's something screwy here. You cannot be compensated for commuting to your office, but I believe you can claim at least the mileage he's racking up in this situation, since it's uncompensated work-related expense - which at 50.5 cents a mile, ends up not being too bad if he's going two hours one way. Make sure you keep a very documented log of ALL mileage driven in this particular vehicle (where to, for what reason etc).

As for refusing to pay him while he's traveling on company business, that also sounds shady, but I'm not sure how it applies to travel. I know that a company cannot refuse to pay you if you're hourly and they require you to do something (no "unpaid Saturday staff meetings" for instance), but really not sure if it applies to travel.

 

[ecmst12]

The first trip from home in the morning and the last trip home in the evening are always considered "normal commute" and are not compensable time according to the IRS and DOL. Only travel WITHIN the work day is compensable. If possible he should arrange his first and last jobs to be closer to home, and save the further locations for the middle of the day.

 

[wesawitbleed]

thanks for the input.

my husbands boss gave him some more information and it sounds like even though he drives the company vehicle and uses their fleet card for gas he cannot be paid for it by the dol...like you had stated ecmst.


now i have another question. when he was on salary it was always presumed by him and his boss that his rate of pay was for 40 hours at $17.00 an hour. now they sent him another email saying his new hourly rate of pay is $12.36 due to the change and that the rm's will realize the true salary rate of pay was at 50 and not 40. so in order for my husband to see what he was getting on salary he will need to work 50 hours instead of the assumed 40. can they honestly do this? we seriously thought it was a god send that the dol got involved but now we wish they never had due to these changes. the company is screwing my husband over even if he works 40 hours.

the only reason he took this position was because he was in an arcade as manager and knew it would be shutting down in a year or so and didn't want to have to worry about his job and possibly relocating out of state. even his boss who is the district magager had said the route manager make twice the minimum wage(ca=8.00 an hour) if not more.

 

[cbg]

Yes, they can do this. As far as the law is concerned, they do not owe him (or any employee) a single penny more than the higher of state or Federal minimum wage. There is no law prohibiting them from reducing wages as long as the employees receive whatever notice might be required by your state (in most states a notice over the time clock that "effective today all wages are reduced by 20%" to be sufficent notice).

It's a shame but it is not illegal.

 

[ecmst12]

Did he typically work 50 hours before? If so, nothing will change. The main difference now is that he has the POTENTIAL to earn more by working more overtime, if the company allows it. However it sounds like he had it pretty cushy before, getting paid as if he worked 40 hours per week when in fact 10 hours of that time was his normal (non compensable) commuting time! So I see how he would think he's getting a raw deal, but it's all perfectly legal.

 

[wesawitbleed]

his work week varies. what has us angry is we always presumed his salary was based on 40 hours a week and not 40 + 10 overtime. he'll be able to arrange it to make it at least that but we just feel like we have been given the short end of the stick due to this investigation.

supposedly the figure was set by the dol. if they blanketed all the rm's with the same pay then it is a raw deal. my husband was told he was one of the few higher paid rm's as salary.

i'm just furious. he was told about the exempt change 3ish weeks ago and last night he finds an email about how the clocking in and out will be and another email today about his rate pay. its just all uncertainty and not planned out right. everything has basically seemed like last minute with corporate. they're basically going with the flow and fixing any road bumps instead of coming up with a new employee handbook to cover all bases. the investigation ended in july and in mid-december they let him know of the change and yesterday they finally give him notice of what he has to do to ensure he gets paid accurately.

thanks to all for the input.