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My employers, a French couple, proposed to us all that we agree to go on salary instead of hourly wage. They went back to France for 6 weeks, to get their visas taken care of, and when they came back they wanted our decision.
Since it's quite illegal for them to put me on salary on many levels, and since I would have ended up making $5.71 an hour instead of the $9 an hour I now make I told them I did not want to do it. They said okay..... but.....
The next day the employers who have all along told me how happy they are with my work had stuck Post-It's all over the kitchen, and written on them was "Dirty, clean this!" There was also a long list of new tasks and demands written up over the counter. Never has this happened before.
All of my co-workers agreed to go along with the salary offer, and the manager did all he could to talk them into it. I can't understand why they did it, it's a straight out pay cut, and totally illegal, but maybe they just did it to keep their jobs and avoid reprisals. It would seem now I'm being punished for not going along with their illegal pay cutting scheme.
I'm thinking it will probably get worse, and they will come up with some contrived reason to fire me.
First of all it doesn't matter if your employer is French, German or Canadian..... I think they have realized it is more cost effective to hire someone on Full time basis rather then give them an hourly pay which is pretty common in this economy.
I feel your concern since I have been working as a contractor since last 9-10. Every where I worked, employers pitched in the full time sales pitch and in certain places terminated me on short notice or found a replacement and availed the exit clause on my contract. It is pretty common. Not sure if you had some sort of date on your contract but usually contracts have a start date or an end date with possibility of extension. If you happen to have such document try reviewing it and see if you find anything in there. If not its not a big deal.
Otherwise, its time to start looking for a new job. No matter how good of a worker you are unfortunately you in your employer's radar for being an expensive resource since every one else is taking full time offer. Its only a matter of time you will replaced or fired.
Please help us understand what is illegal about putting you or anyone else on salary?? Its a known fact that hourly pay is more than full time pay. Its usually about additional perks which comes with full time offer but its usually a personal decision.
There is a certain minimum pay that is necessary to legally put some one on salary. It is in the mid 20K's USD. Otherwise all the min wage employers would put their workers on salary and work them 60 hours a week for what works out to less than min wage.
First of all it doesn't matter if your employer is French, German or Canadian.....
I never said it did.
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I feel your concern since I have been working as a contractor since last 9-10. Every where I worked, employers pitched in the full time sales pitch and in certain places terminated me on short notice or found a replacement and availed the exit clause on my contract.
I'm not a contract worker, I was hired as a permanent hourly employee.
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Please help us understand what is illegal about putting you or anyone else on salary??
The law is that exempt salaried employees have to make at least $455 a week. I make about $80 a week for the 12 hours a week I'm currently scheduled for during the off-season here, and it's an illegal way of cutting the pay of hourly workers below minimum wage, far below minimum wage in this case. During season I never made more than $260 a week. So clearly I am not within the requirements for an exempt salaried employee.
This is the whole debate of exempt vs non exempt. Keep in mind that if they want someone as exempt they pretty much have to give you the autonomy of that position otherwise they can find themselves in court.
I worked for a retailer that tried to fight this and lost in a class action settlement. They had people work well beyond 40 hours that were not management and at rates even lower then their hourly rate and possible lower then minimum wage.
It was huge when it was eliminated although the lawsuits on the back pay were at most 3% on the dollar.
There is a certain minimum pay that is necessary to legally put some one on salary. It is in the mid 20K's USD. Otherwise all the min wage employers would put their workers on salary and work them 60 hours a week for what works out to less than min wage.
Yes, that's it, and I'm quite sure that's their intention. They told us they are expanding the store hours and expect us all to work much longer hours once season starts up again here. So to get out of paying overtime and cut their payroll they came up with this scheme. It's just plain illegal, and they know it. They did their best to keep us from talking to each other about it before they left to deal with their visas. Well, why, if it was all above board?
One of the reasons why I would never take a management job at my workplace. You get paid 45 hrs salary but end up working a lot more for that basically for free.
Amy, I know you posted about this issue in a previous thread started in June. You stated at the end of that thread that you didn't want to wait for them to terminate you, and were going to look for another job.
Have those efforts not paid off? Or have you not looked for other employment? I'm trying to figure out what happened between that thread and this one.
Oh I have been frantically looking for another job since I last posted about this, but it's off-season here in Naples, and there are simply no jobs out there to be had, and they know it. I go through the listings several times a day, and all there is out there are scams, jobs requiring you to speak Spanish or another language, or they require years of experience, or professional qualifications I don't have. I have applied for jobs since my last post about this, but never heard anything back.
No one wants to train anyone. Then there are jobs that involve sex, Sinfully Maid, where you have to dress in a skimpy French maid costume and be very open-minded, and the plethora of private/personal massage wanted ads, and webcam girl jobs. Well at 60 years of age I'm not qualified, and wouldn't take those jobs anyway. There are jobs for men, that I'd never be hired for, like digging ditches, or heavy lifting jobs. I'm too old for that stuff anyway, and here they seem to want young people. Someone my age doesn't fit in with their young crews.
The upside is that I've been at this job long enough to get unemployment. I think it's going to come to that. Of course, my employers can fight that, and likely will, if they are so serious about cutting costs.
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