Computerized Time Clocks Susceptible to 'Manager Attack' 885
crem_d_genes writes "It appears to be business as usual for some chain stores to delete minutes from employees' time cards to save on the bottom line. The practice, while illegal and officially 'prohibited' by company policies is widely admitted as flourishing. Middle management is especially pressured to engage in the practice known as shaving time - 'a simple matter of computer keystrokes' - or another practice, that of shuffling hours between weeks, which is also prohibited by federal law. A number of lawsuits are being initiated because of admitted and alleged violations."
Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Informative)
True (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can't help but wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can't help but wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
It has been a while, but I recall that the Air Force treated Security Policeman (SP) as a default slot -- good for folks that hadn't requested anything in particular, with aptitudes well-suited to holding a gun while watching for Bad Guys. It's a role closer to security guard than policeman. There are some positions that have more responsibility, but I don't doubt that someone who had served one enlistment as an SP would be qualified for jobs not more complicated than, well, security guard.
(Again, nothing against the SPs: It just wasn't one of those positions that gave experience that was highly sought in the outside world.)
TSG
During my temp career (Score:3, Informative)
Re:To what end? (Score:5, Informative)
While I don't doubt (Score:2, Informative)
Being as that I have been in the center of a few payroll disputes, most recently as last week. I know that you can round time's to the nearest 15 minutes. As long as you do it consistently for each employee each week for non punchcard/computerized employee's you're fine.
You have to show clear consistency between each one, and time 'shaving' as it's called is allowed.
Also worth noting, So called 'overtime' does not apply to a *lot* of people. The article makes it sound that if you work 41 hours in any job you get overtime, which in the United States is wholly untrue.
Anyone working in an administrative capacity, does not rate overtime. If your company does pay you overtime, great.
http://www.dol.gov for any further questions.
Re:True (Score:5, Informative)
Contracts that violate federal law, even when agreed to by both parties, are unenforceable.
Re:Electronic Time Tracking (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Few Workplace Rights (Score:5, Informative)
Eh? Ever hear of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) [dol.gov]? I'd say those are some pretty good rights, including the ability to get back pay (with penalties and interest) long after a bad deed is done. Please don't take a story about some bad companies (who are no doubt headed for trouble on this) and make broad, sweeping US-bashing statements that aren't really true. There are plenty of valid points on which to bash the US, but I don't think this is one of them. The rights are there. The companies in this story violated them, and are subject to penalties because of it. Read the site -- the punishment can be tough, including prison time:
violations may be prosecuted criminally and the violator fined up to $10,000. A second conviction may result in imprisonment.
And what's that about companies not paying taxes? What color is the sky on your planet?
Re:True (Score:4, Informative)
Re:While I don't doubt (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the article? It doesn't show from your comment.
I know that you can round time's to the nearest 15 minutes. As long as you do it consistently for each employee each week for non punchcard/computerized employee's you're fine.
Rounding an employee's time to the nearest quarter-hour is one thing. Shaving off 10-15 hours from an employee's recorded work-week is something completely different.
The article makes it sound that if you work 41 hours in any job you get overtime, which in the United States is wholly untrue.
Quote from the article: "Federal law generally requires paying time-and-a-half to nonmanagerial employees who work more than 40 hours a week."(emphasis added)
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:1, Informative)
The archaic factories and layouts of the US industry simply could not compete with the more modern Japanese and German facilities--that were so efficient, they could make steel and ship it across the ocean for less than it cost to produce it domestically. If anything, the average German and Japanese worker has a higher standard of living that the average American worker...because they are not so much into creating powerful billionaires, as a function of screwing the middle class, as America is.
Both the German and Japanese governments subsidized the creation of their new facilities, something that (to some extent) is illegal, or perhaps just unusual, for the US government to do.
No one was going to loan America's steel industry the funds it would take to rebuild from scratch--and then try to compete with Germany and Japan. For what margin? What's the return? No, they just let it go overseas.
Sound like a familiar pattern?
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Informative)
Overtime isn't always something you plan out and have happen. Sometimes things go wrong, or emergencies occur and people stay late. Are you suggesting all stores should hire 6-12+ people and simply keep them on retainer on the off chance that they're needed for those 2-4 hours a week most overtimes accrue to?
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:5, Informative)
Unions have some bad points, and many people like to point them out for being greedy and self serving bastards who are gouging the companies.
Well Unions are the result of the management abusing workers in the extreme, 100 years ago, they were still using children in dangerous factory jobs. Anyone want to have worked in a coal mine 100 years ago? It is was just dangerous, it was out and out deadly. Unions brought alot of workers rights that did not exist before, like minimum wage. You do not think that management brought that about, do you?
To give a more recent example, management of American Airlines was complaining that they might have go to bankrupty if the Unions did not make concessions, which they did. Not long after it was revealed that management was giving itself retention bonuses. [cnn.com] It is just easier to blame Unions because everyone knows what they earn, but not everyone knows what a manager does...
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Not Just Large Stores (Score:1, Informative)
As times get tougher, expect more companies to do (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not saying what they're are doing is understandable. It absolutely is not. But the way the current business climate is, workers need to more vigilant than ever. The tougher things get, the more desparate businesses will be to survive, and if that means screwing you instead of going out of business, believe me, they will screw you.
When business is good, workers generally get treated better. Well, guess what, business ain't good right now.
The dividend yield for publically traded companies of the S&P 500 is suggestive of how tough things are. It recently hit a record low of 1.5% [jimdeegan.com]
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:3, Informative)
I do.
I also remember thinking to myself that I would be crossing the picket lines so that I could afford rent that month.
You think that's something? (Score:2, Informative)
they clock in, but closing management has to clock them out. since they close the computer system long before they're ready to actually leave, and you can't clock them out for a future time, the manager has to edit their clock-in time to an earlier time to compensate. most managers are good about this.
however, one night they were clearly not going to be done any time soon, but their manager allowed them only a half hour. they said, "well then, we'll be leaving at 12:30." but then they had a better idea. they stayed, didn't bitch about their hour without pay.
no, instead they went to the store owner. brought up the nice fact that insurance will not cover accidents that happen while employees work off the clock; and should they be injured in such a situation, could sue the hell out of him. the culprit manager was fired the next day.
my friend at wal-mart has also told me that management will fire employees who work off the clock for the same reason.
should you find yourself in this type of situation, bring this up.
Simple explanation (Score:3, Informative)
I'll bet a huge proportion of the cost of Nike (et al) trainers goes into the marketing budget; 'building the brand'. Just how many shoes do they have to sell to cover the cost of hiring Ronaldo for a TV spot? (Nike paid his club, Barcelona FC, $77 million in sponsorship, for example).
Not that I'm disagreeing with your comments at all, BTW.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Informative)
For many of these people, BTW, the penalties they will have to pay their babysitters for picking up late (which can be as high as $1/minute, DOUBLING every minute) will vastly outweigh any additional amount they earn from unscheduled, forced overtime.
sPh
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:5, Informative)
Willful violations may be prosecuted criminally and the violator fined up to $10,000. A second conviction may result in imprisonment.
Re:Few Workplace Rights (Score:3, Informative)
Excerpt from article [ecommercetimes.com] posted to /. a few years ago:
That's just the first proof that came to mind. I'm sure you could find much more with a bit of research. Although you'd probably have to be a corporate tax accountant yourself to even know where to look to find all the various loopholes that are available to corporations.I think that this whole system of needless complications and obscurity to hide kickbacks and tax breaks and influence behaviour is nearly as bad as one done in secret.
Re:True (Score:2, Informative)
Reporting this was the _right_ thing to do. The USDOL _will_ get nasty with companies they get these reports on--mainly because they've found that these are rarely isolated incidents. Hourly employees tend to get fired for complaining too loudly about these practices (because it would require a written record of the employee's complaint to management, which is somewhat damning in and of itself) so they keep mum until they're nearly ready to quit over it.
For example, Opryland, USA, while it was open, was one of America's Greatest Child Labor abusers of the time. They were repeatedly hit with restrictions and penalties by the Tennessee DOL, all of which were never mentioned in the papers to avoid harming "the tourism industry". Some of the more egregious violations were as follows:
- Employees were required to wear (but not really allowed to own) uniforms in the park. Park managers were telling empoyees that they were not allowed to clock in until they were wearing their uniforms, even if it meant waiting in a line to get a uniform. They also had to clock out before changing out of the uniforms (approx 20 minutes a day per employee).
- During another season, managers went even further and were altering time cards so that employees were only paid when they arrived at their station, and were clocked out when they left their station. (Subtracting another 10-20 minutes, since the park covered about seven square miles)
- Minor (under 18) employees were expected to remain in the park during the same hours as adult employees, which frequently meant leaving the park at 2am during the summer. I learned a lot about how to dodge drunk drivers from this.
- On several occasions, managers were attempting to dock employees wages, which is flat out forbidden in Tennessee, so they'd do it by changing the timecards.
- For a period of about three months (basically the bulk of a summer), the mechanical Diebold timeclocks used at wardrobe were tampered with in a manner similar to sandbagging electrical meters to ensure they ran fast in the morning and slow in the evening. (Generally amounting to a 12-minute difference in shift length)
Tampering with timecards and clocks is a *major* issue with the DOJ in part because a timecard is supposed to be a written testimony that an employee was on-site at those times.
If any of you wondered why there were no longer teenagers working the games and rides in Opryland during the last few years it was in operation, it was because the Tennessee DOL flat out _forbade_ Opryland (i.e., Gaylord Entertainment) from employing minors at all anymore--because they figured out the minors were the ones who suffered the most often from these violations, as well as the ones being pressured the most to keep their mouths shut, as well as the ones who were the least likely to realize that what was going on wasn't just wrong, but illegal as well.
Sincerely,
Someone who actually put up with three whole years of that bullshit and learned a lot about labor laws in the process.
Social Security Administration is Your Friend. (Score:2, Informative)
See, it turns out that when they adjust the clock, they aren't just screwing YOU, but they are committing an act of tax evasion.
The jail you go to for tax evasion doesn't have a golf course, if you get my drift.
Social Security wants their money, and if your paycheck and timecard don't add up for their bit, they tend to get pretty upset. If a company institutionalizes this sort of fraud, it could easily be the end of them. Seriously. You don't want to be caught cheating the tax folks, plain and simple.
Re:To what end? (Score:2, Informative)
They do tend to come in handy, because a friend of mine was being shorted on hours, so he showed all of his receipts for the week and got paid for his right amount of hours.
Re:What's in it for managers who do this? (Score:3, Informative)
The mid management droids get $10-15/hour and are forced to work a minimum of 50 hours/week as their salary base. They get "Chinese Overtime" (their term) where you get less O/T pay the longer you work.
The full-time hourly peons get a max 38 hours a week, to ensure that they do not get 40. The senior peons get sent home first, and the ones closest to the bottom of the scale may get a whole 38 hours. They watch hours like hawks, I know one manager in Lowes who would plan the work week so that he could overwork people from their 30th to 35th hour, then they were so happy to go home "early" that they didn't realize that they were losing money.
The store manager worship the bonus they get, and the company uses that as a club to get what it wants. My Ex worked at Lowes, and from talking to people who worked at Home Depot and Walmart, it seems that they all subscribe to the same book. If they didn't, they would be at a "disadvantage" to the chains that did.
Spend a few weeks as a holiday worker at one of these places, or date someone who does - it is a real eye opener.
Re:Cue Management apologists! (Score:1, Informative)
It happens, Boston retail knows all the tricks! (Score:2, Informative)
Management were fed up with paying overtime for non-exempt employee's (us 'managers" were worked like slaves!) [on a side note, if the new non-exempt laws gets passed, most of the staff in the company would then not need a time card, which PLEASED the company very much!). so initiated a new "unwritten" policy... to STOP employee's getting overtime, PERIOD.
I know of employee's who were told off sternly, for having 5 minutes of overtime, so much so, employee's started monitoring their own in/out times to ensure they did not get a warning, scare tactics were actually the name of the game.
Department heads were given access to the E-Time system (I had to install the Terminal Session access on their desktops!), and were given the task to monitor in/out swipes daily, for anyone accumulating time which could lead to ovetime being paid sometime in the future. This would lead to the employee being told to leave early so their time would be less, or told to come in at a specific time the next work day so not to go over their regulation 40hr week/80 hours per pay period..
Employee's were also told to swipe in/out at pre-defined times, so to further the collection of possible overtime hours, thus employee's would actually wait at the time clock (like a cackle of hens) for 8:30am and then swipe in!
Editing of punch times was so easy, granted E-Time has audit logs, but those logs are notas detailed as would be required to prove real changes. When I suggested putting better passwords and controls, those suggestions were overlooked.
Upper management would do whatever they wanted (provided they had a lower manager to blame!), and with screwed up time clock policy and the infamous holiday pay "use or loose it" situation, they slowly got rid of lower managers with their own selections, so to further control the game, plenty of people in lower levels to take the blame, take praise when it was warranted, pass the buck when the shit hit the fan!
In my estimation, keeping accurate records of your work hours only benefits YOU... DON'T trust time clocks, as with computers, they are only as good as the information put into them... which can be "fiddled" by a human at the end of the day, and this idea of rounding worked time to 15min blocks, certainly in Mass is illegal, if you work in Mass, regardless of who does the calculation of wages (could be an out-of-state contractor), you still worked in a company in Mass so the company has to obey the state laws!
As to proof of clocking in at specific times... I agree, some sort of receipt when you punch out would be extremly beneficial, although this would only be useful to the employee, not the employer so they are not likely to add something that does not benefit THEM!
Common n manufactoring 2 (Score:2, Informative)
No different spin. Sometimes s**t happens and you get stuck. Almost begged some coworkers who had
burned bridges with companies to report it but no
help there. Employees have little choice, report it and get fired or live with it.
That happened too often to be anything but common practise.
Mostly I was alright with it except in major instances and I have seen emplyees be the abuser in the long run. Not so much now that so much is electronic though. Now the employer cheating rules.
Re:Social Security Administration is Your Friend. (Score:2, Informative)
When your employer screws with your times, not only the state, the fed, especially SSA, IRS, Labor Department, not to mention a couple of other departments kick in and start doing their hunt and peck routine as to why Mr. Hot Shot penny-pinching PHB is cheating Uncle Sam out of his money. If the hours trimmed turn into hundreds, if not thousands, kiss that company byebye, for that PHB, not to mention it's minions will wind up in Ft. Leavenworth, paying the piper, and saying hello to Mr. Tiny.
I said it once, and i'll say it agian.. Don't SCREW with the Fed when it comes to money! They'll hunt your pitiful caboose down anywhere, anytime, and drag you back to the states, no matter what it takes.
Just ask the PHBs over at Enron that bailed, then got dragged back home..
The Real Problem (Score:2, Informative)
and for gosh sakes, if the CEO's son gets a middle/upper management position, he better damned well had to have spent a year working in a store as a stockboy/cashier/broom jockey before he gets to make decisions!
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:3, Informative)
The end of child labor has been demonstrably linked to other effects, not unionization. (These days economic theory is holding that the end of child labor came with machinery that did what children could do better and cheaper. It was no longer worth employing them, add that to incomes big enough to keep children in school.)
To give a more recent example, management of American Airlines was complaining that they might have go to bankrupty if the Unions did not make concessions, which they did. Not long after it was revealed that management was giving itself retention bonuses.
This is a "bad example" sorta thing--the executive bonuses were probably a thousandth of a percentage of the cost of the union concessions. I agree with the unions here that it was a bad faith and hypocritical thing, though financially it was likely a drop in the bucket.
Airlines have been destroyed by unions--the problem is that unions negotiate at different times, and each union can destroy the airline. It means that the airline is forced to give the union exactly what they want every two years or so.
It would be easier if all the union negotiations happened at the same time. It would require fewer concessions and a better balance sheet for the airline.
I happen to be pro-union incidentally, I'm just disagreeing with some of your assertions. (A huge issue I have with unions is that they haven't figured out how to get out of the blue collar fields and get into white collar fields. I happen to believe that open shop laws would allow them to penetrate white collar workplaces, and that's where the growth opportunities are.)
Re:I guess you did not read my OTHER post (Score:3, Informative)
Let me get this right... paying people to work for years is preferable to a system where workers expect their job performance to affect future employment? There are laws in America that forbid an employer from relating anything more than dates of employment, salary and reason the person left. There are sometimes abuses, but I think making society at large pay someone to sit on his duff for years is inexcusable.
Overtime as a *benefit* (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Informative)
Redundancy makes sense in engineering when it doesn't cost anything (or very little) to have something available that sits around and does nothing except in the event of failure of the main something or other.
Doesn't make sense in scheduling because it only results in skyrocketing costs and either reducing or eliminating your profit margin or causing your prices to skyrocket to compensate, effectively removing you from the market.
Even emergencies that happen "all the time" are unpredictable in nature. You say you can just hire one more person and the problem goes away. Now schedule that guy. Put him on the schedule. Where does he go? The nature of the emergency dictates the solution, and the more hours you are open the harder it is to have another guy. If you're only open 10 hours a week, then hiring one more person to work 10 hours a week will keep you covered. But if you're open 160 hours a week, it's a different story.
Here's how you handle scheduling. It's very simple, and the system works well. First you determine how much work is needed to open the store. Then you schedule enough people to do all the work needed and have it open by a specific time. Next you determine, to the best of your ability, how much business you will do before 5pm. 5pm is the standard turnover hour in retail, although I've seen places do their evening shift change at 4pm or 6pm, and I've even seen places not have a shift change. (They were a mess) Now you multiply the amount of business you anticipate by the ideal labor ratio for your business, divide the result by the average hourly wage in your store, and that tells you how many people to schedule. That's not usually good enough, though, since for many businesses afternoon business drops off after lunch, so instead you break the day into smaller chunks and do the same math. Then you look at who can work that day, what you've already scheduled them for, and what you need to schedule them for later on. (After awhile you get a knack for it and don't have to do the fancy math) Great, so far.
Now you build in some redundancy (the best managers already build in some redundancy in their schedule, believe it or not). The best place to build your redundancy is to schedule someone who says "I want all the hours you can give me" to get off work immediately before the time period in which you are concerned about having enough employees. That way, if you need more, you can just ask that guy to stay, knowing he'll probably say yes. There's other ways.
Alright, now you say we should have one more person on the schedule to deal with "emergencies". We have to pay him. Having one more person each hour on the schedule (assuming he's not the one with the emergency) will drive your labor ratio through the roof, and in many retail businesses will actually cause the business to be unprofitable.
Now, as a businessman, pick one:
Having just enough people to do the work that is needed lets you have the lowest prices possible with an acceptable profit margin (assuming other costs are also in line) and still provide the level of service you need to in order to stay in business. Scheduling another person for each hour of business requires your prices go up. Sending people home early because of stupid overtime policies reduces the level of service you can offer.
It's a complex equation. It's also very shortsighted to set your company policies on the word "overtime" rather than the other numbers available. I've made killer overtime in places I've worked while overall we had great service and low labor ratio. The bosses didn't c
Your paradigm is propaganda-born (Score:3, Informative)
We aint slaves. We are the owners of our own country--America. We make whatever deal between ourselves that wish. I say to my fellow citizens that the rich people in this country have too much leverage and power, and that more of their wealth should be taxed more heavily. I say that working people should work together and get the best deal they can, for their taxes, and for themselves as citizens.
It is what you GET for your taxes that counts. Not what you pay. And the wealthy get way too much for what they pay.
You wrote:
"God knows, Europe is now dealing with the massive fallout of decades of increased welfare which has made their workforces complacent and lazy."
Their "fallout" is a lot better than our mess. Do you think their deficits are substantially bigger than ours? I do not think so. Do you think they have more homeless? I know they have less.
Have you even bothered to find out anything about the social democracies, other than what the corporate media pours into your head?
You call them lazy. You mean "lazy" like the plantation owner who watches from his porch, mint julep in hand, while his slaves pick the crops?
Lazy is good--if you are an OWNER. It means you get more for less. That is a Good Thing.
But your paradigm is one inherited from the days of slavery and indentured servants and children laboring in the mills. You have accepted the propaganda poured into your empty little head, and you spew it like an automated fertilizer.
I have a different paradigm: the Third Way, one of capitalism, but where all citizens are owners, not just the wealthy and the upper class and those who slave all their lives, scrambling for every advantage, desperately seeking to place themselves above the masses, like a crab in a bucket. You have bought into the Ponzi scheme.