Raising my hours?

[gryndor]

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

I moved 800 miles to accept a job in Phoenix AZ, last October. I started working as a salaried exempt employee, 40 hours/week. I am a payroll specialist, I process the payroll under my payroll manager's direct supervision, I have no employees of my own, and I don't make company altering decisions.

After I completed my probationary period, my supervisor told me to alter my schedule so that I was working 42.5 hours/week minimum. A couple weeks later, the CFO and my supervisor said that I needed to start putting in 45 hours/week. Now I'm at 50 hours/week and I am completely burned out. It'd be one thing if the workload required these hours, but my job is pretty crystal clear... I can do absolutely everything I need to do, including the mundane clean-up stuff within the 40 hours that I was originally working. I've asked what the extra hours are for, and my answer was so that "someone" in the payroll department is always available. My co worker works 40 hours/week, and my supervisor works probably 45 hours/week.

I've done some research and AZ doesn't seem to have any laws about how employers schedule their employees, or anything for their breaks either for that matter (I get two ten minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch). If they want me to quit thereby relieving them of adding to their already high rate of unemployment claims, can they just put me at 55 hours/week, 60? More??

Can they continue to hike my hours for no apparent reason, other than that I physically have my butt in the chair at all hours of the day?

Also, since I'm salaried, what worked out to be a fairly nice salary has stretched out to be absolutely terrible pay were I paid hourly. Is there absolutely no recourse to any of this than to leave?

 

[swalsh411]

Your recourse is to seek other employment if you are unhappy with the conditions.

As an exempt employee your employer can require you to work as many hours as they want.

 

[cbg]

If they want to require that you work 168 hours a week, there is no law that will stop them. Arizona is not one of the very few states that requires one day off out of every seven; nor is it one of the two states that has a limit to the number of hours of overtime an employer can require. So yes, they can hike your hours as high as they want to, even if it's for no purpose other than to have your butt in a chair, and it's 100% legal.

Salaried and hourly paid are only pay methods and have no legal status of their own. What matters, with regards to overtime, is exempt and non-exempt status. Not all salaried paid jobs are exempt; not all hourly paid jobs are non-exempt. It is not possible to determine by what you have posted if you are salaried exempt or salaried non-exempt. There are roughly 100+ different exempt statuses. Being under someone's direct supervision is not a factor since in any organization, every employee except the CEO is under SOMEONE'S direct supervision, and even the CEO in some organizations reports to a Board of Directors. Nor does your not having direct reports matter, since only the Executive exemption requires that you have direct reports. Your employer is probably classifiying you under the Adminstrative exemption, which you can look up on your favorite search engine. If you feel that it does not apply, your recourse would be throught the US DOL.

FYI, the number of hours an salaried exempt employee works is irrelevant. It is by no means uncommon for an exempt employee to work 60, 70 or even more hours. I had one exempt position where if I'd only worked 60 hours a week, I'd have thought I was on vacation. The salary covers all hours, no matter how many or how few; it is not broken down to an hourly rate.

ETA - your employer can require you to work as many hours as he wants regardless of whether you are exempt or non-exempt. The only difference is whether or not you have to be paid overtime for hours over 40 in a week.

 

[gryndor]

Fair enough... too bad, I really like what I do here... I just can't live up to their expectations.

Thank you very much for your replies.

G

 

[You Are Guilty]

I long for the days where I only had to work 45 hours a week. Heck, I bill more than that now (and one generally has to work 1.1+ hours for every billable hour).

Has the economy improved so dramatically that being "forced" to sit at your desk and play Minesweeper for an extra hour per day is no longer a viable option?

 

[gryndor]

Wow, if I could get away with screwing around at my desk that would be a whole different story...

And I get it, that when you're a high power attorney or CEO or plant manager or something like that, you put in every waking hour. But I'm just a payroll chick... seriously... I pull data, compile it, audit it and then print checks... I really don't need to be here 50 hours/week. I don't even do customer service so sitting here "in case something happens" means very little, as it rarely ever does. I fill my time with re-creating forms and staring at spreadsheets for missing pennies.

 

[You Are Guilty]

My only point was that getting paid to sit around, unmolested, and surf the internet, is not exactly a bad thing. I suspect quite a few forum readers would like to have such a "predicament".

Only you can decide if the salary is "worth it" though.



PS. I'm going to forward the "high-powered" comment to my boss. I'll let you know how that goes.

 

[gryndor]

PS. I'm going to forward the "high-powered" comment to my boss. I'll let you know how that goes.

Good luck with that

PS. Lawyers ARE high-powered to cogs in the machine like myself... How you work it out amongst yourselves is beyond me