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My mom works for a company which sells meat, Buffalo, Ostrich, Beef, etc. Her job entails many different tasks one of them being inputting the address for orders. One time she input the wrong order for the wrong address. The meat shipped out and got returned, by the time it was returned the dry ice was evaporated and the meat was bad. This was a very large order of $800. Her boss ended up pulling that money from her paycheck to pay for the order (almost two weeks of pay for her). This isn't isolated to my mom (he charges her coworkers for their mistakes) and she did say it was her mistake but I find this extremely tacky. The boss has two high end sports cars (Audi R8 and a Ferrari of some kind). The company is booming.
My questions are as follows:
1) What do you think of this practice? Does it seem fair?
2) Do any of you know if this is this even legal?
No it's not fair.
Any attorney worth anything makes that $800 in a half day or less. Whether it's legal or not is not relevant. She can't afford the attorney, the boss can.
This is why we have unions. Unfair labor practices need to be scrutinized and stopped by someone.
Mod cut.
Last edited by PJSaturn; 08-02-2016 at 03:32 PM..
Reason: Please leave politics out of it.
Why do you think it is reasonable for the business owner to eat the loss because of your mother's mistake?
Yes, docking pay is legal as long as the deductions don't take the employee under minimum wage. So, he cannot take someone's paycheck, but he can dock her $20 per week for 40 weeks to get his money back (or whatever the math works out to to keep her at minimum wage). Depending on your state, this may or may not be also addressed at the state level, so you need to check with them.
I call BS on that.
First it's his business or at least his responsibility. Perhaps he should dock himself because he hired the mom or do you think that when he f's up he does dock himself ??? If he thinks he can find someone who never makes mistakes then by all means hire them or automate the operation such that the chances of such mistakes are minimized. This is his job. Humans make mistakes they are not meant for mindless repetitive tasks day in, day out. Perhaps if she make mistakes all the time and this was a message to improve or be let go but there is no information on this.
The only thing the boss showed was that he cares nothing for the employees and is only focused on the bottomline. It's not right and that is why it is bothering the employee.
The only deductions your employer can take from your pay are deductions he or she must take and deductions you have agreed to. Your employer must have your agreement in writing. Your employer cannot decide to take other deductions out of your pay for any other reason.
Sometimes employers take money out of your pay to pay themselves back for cash shortages, or property damage. But this is not legal.
cash shortages:
If your employer believes you are the reason for a cash shortage, he or she must prove you committed a crime. If they want you to pay for the cash shortage, they must take you to court and prove you took the money. Your employer cannot simply pay you less.
property damages
Your employer may not deduct from your wages the cost of any property damage you caused.
He or she cannot dock you for
the cost of general wear and tear type damage to property,
damage you caused to his or her property, nor
damages you caused to someone else’s property.
If your employer feels that you intended to damage the property he or she may ask your permission to take the cost of the damage out of your pay, or she can take you to court. She can only take the cost of the damages out of your pay if you agree in writing. You do not have to agree.
Business expenses
Your employer cannot dock the cost of tools, equipment, cleaning supplies, gas, insurance, or his other business expenses from your pay. All of these are “ordinary business expenses†your employer must pay. He is not allowed to make you pay for them.
So there you have it, even taxes which are removed on your paystub have to have documentation that you agreed.
the wise persons advising to get a lawyer most likely understand the employee/employer rules and regulations.
Back in the early 80's I was a waitress and bartender to put myself through school.... a couple of places where I worked would penalize us if a customer skipped out on a tab.... so you bet we were chasing them out to the parking lot
People ARE going to make mistakes. Unless they have some super awesome automated way of preventing human error it is bound to happen occasionally. My mom has made 2 errors in her 6 years of employment there. Plus, I KNOW you can't legally fire someone for making a mistake occasionally. If she were a frequent offender then I would understand your comment however since she isn't I find it quite heartless.
Actually, in most states you can be fired for any reason or none at all. It's called employment at will. And when you're fired, they do not have to give a reason.
I wouldn't worry about my mother's problems on her job. That's her problem. But if she can't enter the correct order and the correct address and ships $800 worth of meat to the wrong customer, then she does deserve to be fired. This isn't a difficult job. Getting it right 100% of the time IS her job! And why should the company eat the loss because she can't follow the orders given to her?
People ARE going to make mistakes. Unless they have some super awesome automated way of preventing human error it is bound to happen occasionally. My mom has made 2 errors in her 6 years of employment there. Plus, I KNOW you can't legally fire someone for making a mistake occasionally. If she were a frequent offender then I would understand your comment however since she isn't I find it quite heartless.
You can fire at will, as long as it is not EEOC protected.
My mom works for a company which sells meat, Buffalo, Ostrich, Beef, etc. Her job entails many different tasks one of them being inputting the address for orders. One time she input the wrong order for the wrong address. The meat shipped out and got returned, by the time it was returned the dry ice was evaporated and the meat was bad. This was a very large order of $800. Her boss ended up pulling that money from her paycheck to pay for the order (almost two weeks of pay for her). This isn't isolated to my mom (he charges her coworkers for their mistakes) and she did say it was her mistake but I find this extremely tacky. The boss has two high end sports cars (Audi R8 and a Ferrari of some kind). The company is booming.
My questions are as follows:
1) What do you think of this practice? Does it seem fair?
2) Do any of you know if this is this even legal?
Why do you think it is reasonable for the business owner to eat the loss because of your mother's mistake?
Yes, docking pay is legal as long as the deductions don't take the employee under minimum wage. So, he cannot take someone's paycheck, but he can dock her $20 per week for 40 weeks to get his money back (or whatever the math works out to to keep her at minimum wage). Depending on your state, this may or may not be also addressed at the state level, so you need to check with them.
Because the owner gets all of the reward (profit) , so they take the risk as well.
And, if they are in Illinois as it seems, no he cannot dock her wages for damages.
One of our employees, who we normally trust complicitly, recently had an incident where he tried to get into a gated community through a back gate (instead of accessing the main gate like we normally do, to log our being there and get a pass for the day).
He broke the back gate, and now we are responsible, to the tune of about $1200.
We aren't considering firing him, but we are discussing taking this amount out of his bonus at the end of the year. This guy has worked for us for years, and he knows the proper etiquette for going into this (and any other gated community), so it's not as if he didn't know any better.
I am curious how your situation pans out.
Don't you have insurance for this sort of thing?
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