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."
This would be a better article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't help but wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly was a former member of the Air Force military police doing working for Toys 'R' Us in anything less than a managerial capacity?
Remember when we had unions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep handwritten records (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep handwritten records in ink of your time in a journal along with your daily activities.
Employer justification (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can't help but wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
To what end? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why we have unions (Score:5, Insightful)
Engaging in what is essentially part-time slavery is bad management; those who engage in it, or look the other way, are criminals.
Few Workplace Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the punishment when an employee steals from his employer? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I say it's time we start holding companies responsible for their actions. In particular, it should be easier to pierce the corporate veil than it is today. It would be nice if they paid taxes, too.too.
Thanks to Unions.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Once upon a time..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, I wonder at the effectiveness and pragmatism of such tactics. While it can be profitable to attempt stunts like these in large factories with hundreds of employees where a couple added minutes every day can add up, having so many people constantly look at their watches in perplexement is bound to rebound on you eventually when they sue and some overzealous jury takes the moral high ground. Not that it matters to the manager who actually perpetrated the crime since the verdict won't come out of his skin, but the company itself should probably be more vigilant in such matters. History is rife corporations being fined exhorbitant amount due to the actions of employees harassed by the bottom line.
Hard to detect? (Score:5, Insightful)
But c'mon, most people can tell if they're frickin' worked overtime and suddenly not see that extra pay1/2 in their paycheck.
Trust me, I work 42-44 hours a week, and if even the slightest calculation on my pre-tax pay does NOT equal +40*8/hr. I'd notice pretty frickin' quick.
Always remember, even with direct deposit, CHECK YOUR PAY STUBS. Do the simple math, if it's too tricky (let's say you don't get a flat number per hour 'n you worked a frag-ton of hours) get a bloody calculator. Hell, there's probably one on your cell phone, and there sure as heck is one on your computer. =)
I figured they were talking like shaving 15 minutes out of the day to save a few bucks here and there, but entire rounds of overtime pay?! This isn't hour-SHAVING, this is hour-REAPING.
Unauthorized overtime (Score:3, Insightful)
This can be a sticky situation for employers. Frequently, they instruct employees that overtime is not available, people go over anyway, and the company has to pay up, whether or not they need/can afford the extra hours. That's the law.
As long as employers are clear about how many hours people are allowed to work, they shouldn't be required to shell out for people who go over.
Re:work the clock (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, somebody who stands by the timeclock from 12:37:43 to 12:38:00 is not actually working... so in this case it'd be legal for the manager to correct the stop time to 12:37:43 and therefore take advantage of the downward rounding to shave a quarter hour.
Re:Once upon a time..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reluctantly, we need a new regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
WORM drives or secure bitemporal databases (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
If a "you've got to get this done" order comes in conflict with the "you've got to stop on time" order, then the employee is already screwed.
Re:To what end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cue Management apologists! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This would be a better article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Having employees is more complicated than playing a video game. Often times employees will feel loyal to the company. They'll want to put in the extra time because they perceive it as helping the company that puts food on their table.
And you just want to fire these people? They're usually not folks that are trying to chissle their employer out of a few extra bucks. They're people who want to do a good job and will keep working until it's done.
Sheesh.
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Few Workplace Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd call it simple theft. Try to pretty it up with names like "shaving" or whatever, but it still boils down to good 'ol garden variety stealing. I'm not sure why this is being handled in civil court instead of criminal court. They had motif, intent and opportunity and should be facing the same sanctions as employees caught boosting goods out of the warehouse.
You're totally right about responsibility. As long as some groups can have their criminal behavior regulated to civil court, nothing will change. Because most of the time they can get away with stealing for years and litigate a fine when, and if, they caught. There's no incentive to change.
Re:Working though lunch is not allowed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:To what end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless there is an audit trail every time the manager edits the time, I'd say most folks would believe the handwritten records. Only if there was no easy way to "adjust" hours would computer record be more credible.
Problem is, many folks will forget to punch in or out, punch in before they change, or otherwise try to game the system in their favor. Therefore a manager needs a easy method to account for this, wether it is done for simple forgetfulness or in an outright attempt to defraud the employer.
What we have here is folks seeking a technology solution to an HR problem. Even if you find a perfect technology solution, a manager can still intimidate employees into punching out early, working off the clock, etc. so long as there folks desparate for work, employers of last resort will try this; note that this ensures they get the cruft of the labor pool, will offer poor service, have employee theft problem. Turns into a vicious cycle, since this will reinforce their view that employyees are a shifty lot that deserve this abuse....
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This would be a better article... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about: stop giving sanction to slavemasters by volunteering yourself as a slave. Stop participating in the aspects of society you find abbhorent or wrong.
Most people will patently reject this solution. Either the ideal is too precious to give up in the face of harsh reality, the person has mired themselves in debt and this is not an option, or they fear peer pressure from family and friends. But those are personal problems.
This problem is centuries old and its root has reached critical mass. If you don't want to comply, and you don't want to drop out, the only option remaining is revolt. And did you really expect to find a blueprint for revolution in a magazine article?
Re:Unauthorized overtime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Few Workplace Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:work the clock (Score:3, Insightful)
When I am ready to go home for the day, it takes me roughly 30 seconds to log out, collect personal items from my desk and stand up. Another 75 seconds are spent walking from my desk to the time clock. In winter an extra 30 seconds can be added to account for retrieving and putting on my coat.
Thus if I'm sure to start this process no earlier then 5:05:15 on my computer clock then I am able to get the extra few min.
I still haven't been able to time things very well in the morning as traffic is a major unknown.
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To what end? (Score:5, Insightful)
same problem with voter receipts (Score:3, Insightful)
By distributing the shaving of hours - almost nobody will notice. And even if they do - you can chaulk it up to an accident or 'glitch' in the system - and almost everyone will believe you.
This is the same problem with paper voting receipts - they're almost completely useless. The only thing they help with is if the fraud is extremely blatant. But if that fraud is at all sophisticated, and just occasionally/randomly adjusts reality - it won't be noticed, and it won't be dealt with seriously.
Meanwhile, you've reduced your [payroll costs|voter results] by 10% with probably just 0.0001% chance of getting caught.
Re:Once upon a time..... (Score:2, Insightful)
The personal stakes are very high for the individual, if one would stand up against wrong-doings in a corporation - or in any other relationship with extremely tilted power balance.
In spite of this, you found the courage to do what's right. Commendable.
How come this is not considered theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unauthorized overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
The proper solution for this is diligent managerial supervision. The problem is, these "time shaver" middle managers aren't catching this unauthorized overtime until it's too late. If it's that important, they should be out on the floor at 7 hours, 59 minutes telling the employee "you're done-- clock out". If they can't "manage" the job, perhaps they should be stock clerks.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this 8 hour workday I keep hearing people talk about? - Salaried, exempt. :-(
Re:To what end? (Score:1, Insightful)
My understanding is the courts actually give a fair amount of weight to handwritten records if they are made on a regular basis (not scribbled the night before your court appearance!)
If a number of employees kept such records, and they had the same problems with the employer's computer records, that would be pretty strong evidence. (IANALBIWTSTAJDO - I am not a lawyer, but I was too stupid to avoid jury duty once.)
Theft works both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
When a company steals from ALL of its employees they get....?
Re:Cue Management apologists! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sociallist as defined by a republican: "Anybody who disagrees with me"
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The "whoops I'm 15 minutes late in clocking out" situation, where an employee may not have really worked any overtime, but maybe got a hair sidetracked on his way to the timeclock, or just didn't realize what time it was, his watch was out of sync with the time-clock, etc...
Uh, that would be me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, well, sorta.
Point #1: this is illegal. The United States has a bewildering array of laws and regulations governing how people are paid. They're bewildering because they're written by lawyers, and they're written by lawyers because a seemingly endless list of companies have tried to cheat. But the bewildering array--in the end--ain't all that tough to understand: if she works for 40 hours, she gets paid for 40 hours. You can define the weekly pay period (in the sense that some employers count Sunday as the first day of the week, some Monday, some Saturday, etc.) but it must apply to everybody. Overtime applies after 40 hours (and after 8 hours per day, in some circumstances).
But there's more: if the worker is under 18, there are limits on the number of hours worked per week, and worked per day, during the school year. If the worker is under 18 (for some equipment), or under 16 (for *lots* of equipment) the worker cannot use some kinds of equipment, and generally can't clean any equipment more sophisticated (or dangerous) than a spoon. There are all kinds of rules. And all kinds of draconian penalties that the government will slap you with if you get caught.
Point #2: The question is, who gets caught? Notice a theme that runs through the article: over and over again somebody says, "the district manager told me that overtime was prohibited, so I had to make sure we had none on the books." Put another way, somebody in senior management issues a decree: payroll will be less than N% of gross sales for the month, Or Else. And the local store manager is left with the problem of making sure that payroll stays below N%--because he or she is perfectly aware of what "Or Else" means. Or--perhaps--because he or she has figured out that being a senior company manager is a nice life, and wants to stand out as a cost-cutting superstar. Either way, (and here's the crucial point) the local manager is the one who is fiddling with the time cards.
So somebody (oh, say, like the irate father of a cheated employee) calls the cops. If the call goes to the company's "confidential" reporting line, the manager gets yelled at. If the call goes to the state Department of Labor (and every U.S. state has one) the company will put on a charade--they'll have big meetings, they'll express all kinds of sensitivity, and they'll issue a press release saying that they have fired the manager. And firing the manager, of course, solves the problem.
And if you think this problem is caused by the chump store manager...
Firing the guy two rungs up on the ladder from minimum wage doesn't stop the problem. When a consistent pattern exists of timeclock cheating (which the Times article flatly asserts) the problem belongs to the company. (Note, particularly, the last item in the story: the writer expressly makes the point that McDonald's does not do this.) We've been down this road with civil rights and sexual harassment: a pattern of practice across the company is more telling than a few memos telling managers not to do something wrong.
The solution:
Launch a federal task force into wage and timeclock abuse at Wal-Mart. There is an ongoing investigation into the use of illegal aliens on cleaning crews at Wal-Mart--now this. Clearly there's grounds to dig into the mess. Find a few smoking guns, and then start arresting people. Who told you to do this? Who showed you? Who knew what? When?
Send a CEO to prison, and maybe people will pay attention.
Re:This would be a better article... (Score:2, Insightful)
What's in it for managers who do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Insightful)
i.e.: Hiring illegal immigrants to work for half of the minimum wage (NY), and 'shaving' time off of timesheets. I'm glad I just buy there.
So you're saying you're in favor of these illegal practices.
Here's a more direct analogy that might help (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't they also shave officer salaries. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone really believe that time shaving, going after MP3 traders, etc. is somehow directly linked to the current administration? If you think that time shaving wasn't just as much a problem before Bush, for those companies that had fully-electronic time clocks, you're kidding yourself.
Similarly, I doubt that these practices will change just from the installation of a new administration. As long as employees take time shaving lying down, and people continue to shop there, it will be a problem.
Re:Cue Management apologists! (Score:2, Insightful)
No solution exists. Workers are naturally going to minimize the work they must do to maximize their pay, and management is naturally going to try to maximize they work they get for a given unit of payment. It is the way things are and complaining that about either side is just ignorant. This is especially so wrt to unions, as unions are just a natural part of the free market for labor. If you believe in the free market, then you must accept that certain worker, management, and industrial organizations will form.
I would say this. Management claiming that adjusting workers hours is not policy is the most ludicrous statement I have ever heard. It many cases it is clearly a lie. If it were not policy, such changes would lead a clear audit trail, and a process of disputing the changes would be in place. The fact that we have lawsuits on the issue clearly indicate that such devices are not in place.
They don't do this in the Euro social democracies (Score:4, Insightful)
When are Americans going to wake up and realize that capitalism is a TOOL to be used, and NOT a end-all, be-all, or a way of life, or a fuckin' religion?
But like all tools, it must have comprehensive controls and safeguards built in. You wouldn't design a chainsaw without adequate controls and safeguards, would you?
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are commiting fraud. They are defrauding the employees out of wages. They are also defrauding the government out of payroll taxes, but we'll leave that for someone else.
Suppose you're selling me a serivce (let's say computer consulting), and you bill me at a rate of $100 per hour. I'm in charge of keeping track of the hours you work. You tell me each day what you worked & I then give you a statement at the end of each week with the total hours and a check for what I owe you. If you submit 10 hours for five days (50 hours = $5000) & I give you the statement with 45 hours listed and a check for $4500, explain how I did not just cheat you out of $500.
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to order my sneaks from a company that specializes in wide sizes, Hitchcock Shoe, and their house brand is the only model that fits right.
My sneakers are of high quality, and interesting style, and cost $35. They're made in the US... all of Hitchcock's house brands are made in either the US or England. First world countries, with unionized shops and first world wages, benefits, and protections. It's not like the product has a huge market to drive down the prices or subsidise their marketing, either.
Thirty five bucks.
How much did your made-in-China, sweatshop produced Nikes cost you?
Offshoring is a dodge management uses to hide their incompetence. American labor is a phenomenal value: literate, educated, adaptable and to-the-grindstone efficient. It's why Nissan, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai all have factories here. American managers are a bunch of fad-addled buffoons who can't see past the next quarter and insist on ludicrous compensation, so get their asses kicked by more reasonable and intelligent European and Asian companies.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:Here's a more direct analogy that might help (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:2, Insightful)
(oh, I forgot, this is slashdot - where geeks are men, facts are scarce, and the parent's rant was actually modded informative)
Re:Cue Management apologists! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is stealing. Stealing is wrong. Stealing is wrong when customers shoplift. Stealing is wrong when the cashier steals from the till. And stealing is wrong when management steals from the employees. Stealing is always wrong.
Stealing is wrong when you hire people to do it on your behalf too. Hiring a person to shave time cards is wrong, even if you don't do it yourself.
BTW: Hiring a government official to steal for you is also wrong. Even if you call it a tax and even if the person being taken from is rich.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
Who in their right mind would agree to pay their babysitters this amount? That would be $1023 for being 10 minutes late! To quote the famous legend:
There is an ancient story of a king in India who, being very pleased with a man, told him to ask for any gift. The man asked him to place a gold coin on one of the squares of a chess board and then merely double the amount on each subsequent square. That is, put two on the next square and four on the next square and so on.
"Oh, that's not enough, ask for more," the king said in his generosity. The man insisted that was all he wanted.
The king could not realize that by the time could not realize that by the time he got to the 32nd square, the cumulative number of gold coins would total amazing 2,147,483,648
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like lower management who doesn't know how business works :) The problem is not that workers refuse to work overtime, its they won't do it for free. Overtime pay is supposed to be an incentive NOT to overwork your employees. Every place I've ever worked for (from, subway, to walmart, to universities after I got my degree) have had the same policy, "We do not pay overtime."
Here's why. Say you own a trucking company, and theres a long stretch of road called "interstate 1" where the speed limit is 55MPH. For arguments sake, lets say the road is 55 miles long. Said trucking company wants to lower costs -- they want drivers to traverse the road quicker. Now, how to write the company policy for that?
Statement 1: "Drivers will maintain an average speed of 75 MPH on interstate 1."
Statement 2: "Drivers will take no longer then 40 minutes to traverse interstate 1."
Whats the difference? Statement 1 is ordering employees to commit crimes -- civil and criminal penalties may ensue. Statement 2? The implication is that employees should break the law to meet the companies demands -- much harder argument for a prosecuter to make.
Its the *EXACT* same thing with the overtime rule, the rule is designed to force managers to shave time. They can't say "Shave time" so they give a strict limit on how many hours the store pay which is far below the number actually needed. If a manager refuses to shave time, then fire him and find someone who will.
As far as tricks, this one is old school. What i've been seeing alot of lately, is companies compensating employees with comp time, but then refusing to ever allow employees to use the comp time. It's a much better scam because its very hard to prove you had no intention of allowing them to use their comp time. If an employee insists, just fire them, oops their comp time is gone to :)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:4, Insightful)
See "All Quiet on the Western Front" for a discussion of the difference between rich families and poor families when it comes to paying for vital services (doctor's care in that case, but the point applies). Nothing new there since 1918 I guess. Or 0018 for that matter.
sPh
Re:To what end? (Score:2, Insightful)
There not much customer service anyway at McD, yell a number, pay, and wait. Geeze its like you guys expected them to suck you off or something!
I guess you did not read my OTHER post (Score:4, Insightful)
But the workers do not report it very often. Why not? Because when they try to get another job, they may not be able to. For one, the old employer may badmouth them, effectively blackballing them from the job market.
So, what makes the social democracies from America in this regard? In the social democracies, if the workers cannot get another job (especially because of being blackballed/given a bad reference), then the state will give them MONEY for YEARS. Yes, it is not uncommon for workers who cannot find work to draw welfare/unemployment for years in the social democracies. So, therefore the workers there are NOT at the mercy of the job market.
This situation is mainly true in the true social democracies, such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, etc., but also to a somewhat lesser degree in other Euro countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Switz, Italy, Luxembourg, and also Australia and even Canada (where the average able bodied young male draws an average 21 months of unemployment at a time (that is IMPOSSIBLE in the USA)).
So, this is America--a social darwinistic state, where we live shorter lives than the Europeans, where we are stunted physically compared to the citizens of the social democracies, and where we come up with way back in the pack in many areas of living standards.
Best country in the world...MY ASS!
Re:Here's a more direct analogy that might help (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice troll.
I don't care if you pirate money, that is, make unlicensed copies of coins and bills. The government might, but it doesn't really concern me.
I do care if you steal the specific coins that are en route to my account. Which is what the article talks about.
Of course, if you meant "pirated" in it's original meaning...
Now this is interesting. Perhaps you might be so kind as to give some examples of Slashdot advocating abolishing all laws (which is what this really means, if you think about it) ?You're on the right track. It is indeed more morally wrong to steal from the poor than from the rich, because the poor will suffer more from losing a given amount of money than the rich will.
So yes, you did mess this up, but keep trying and I'm sure you get it straight. Soones or later...
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:1, Insightful)
non-cream-of-the-crop
&
managers
does anyone else see the problem here, like the parent is part of management somewhere...and he considers all subordinates he's dealing with not very bright. i.e. "you aren't dealing with the cream of the crop"
walmart has management that I would probably consider "not too stupid"
these people would be at head quarters, not at the stores themselves.
management at ALL chains/retail are as bad as their grunts/employees....the same type of people you don't consider the cream of the crop.
and don't forget once you hit corp. headquarters...we're still not talking "good" yet...we're still in "not too stupid" category.
Re:Remember when we had unions? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have about half a clue stick, lets take a look at the other half. Chinese labor is cheap because THE EMPLOYEES ARE SLAVES [dsausa.org]. Largely they are forced to work by the communist state, yes, China is a communist state, remember?
The basis of a free market economy is that companies are forced to compete on an "equal" playing field. Slave labor>/a> is not an equal playing field. [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Not quite so anonymous any more (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope--and it no longer needs to be. This happened two-and-a-half years ago, and Daughter #1 no longer works there. And isn't likely to want to go back.
Anonymity matters
When I threatened the restaurant chain they took it seriously. And when they landed on the local restaurant staff, some of the assistant managers spent some time trying to figure out who had sent it. They guessed that the letter came from the parent of one of the waitresses who were under 18 (since I'd mentioned keeping minors past midnight), and quietly pulled those workers aside and asked them if they knew who sent the email. Daughter #1, having been coached on the ethics of the situation, lied through her teeth.
(Digression: you are only responsible to tell the truth to people who have a legitimate claim to the truth. When the Nazis ask if there are Jews in your basement [assuming there are] you are perfectly correct to lie. The 'Nazis at the door' question is standard stuff for a seminary ethics class, and we had this conversation with Daughter #1 when I sent the email.)
But if the assistant managers had found out who it was, her life would have been miserable. That's the beauty of anonymous email: you can threaten the company--or complain to the authorities--without retribution. If the authorities won't move without a complaint (from a soon-to-be-unemployed-employee) you can make your pitch to the local newspaper. Practically every TV station in America has a "Channel 8 HelpLine" type of crew: they investigate complaints, putting the most photogenic ones on TV. They'd love to do a "concealed identity" interview about how your boss is stealing money from your paycheck, followed by the obligatory denials from the home office, etc.
As I wrote earlier, the trick is to shine light on the cockroaches. With the Internet, it's easier to do.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:2, Insightful)
(oh, I forgot, this is slashdot - where geeks are men, facts are scarce, and the parent's rant was actually modded informative)
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle....
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They don't do this in the Euro social democraci (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but people don't seem to understand who the victim is. They think the victim is "the employee." And consequently they assume nothing will happen if they report the situation (because they don't know who to report it to.)
The people who *care* about this crap are the tax folks. The person who is the highest level authority who knows this policy is being implemented, is guilty of some real crimes. 5-10 in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison kind of tax fraud crimes.
Don't fuck around with this shit. You're breaking the law if you obey the order to change your time card! Your manager is breaking the law if he tells you to do it, and worse if he does it for you. And if his boss knows, you're into federal racketeering and corruption territory.
Don't think anything will come of it? The IRS and the Social Secuirity administration are serious about wanting their money, and if you change a timesheet, it's THEIR money you're stealing. Don't do it. I wouldn't work there another day if I was asked to do it, and I'd literally make a federal case out of it, if it happened.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Insightful)
And not long ago, many more Wal-Marts had policies of enough staffing
to open additional queues whenever there were three or more people in line.
I doubt many of us really need a New York Times story to tell us that many
Dollar Generals, Pep Boys and Wal-Mart stores regulary abuse employees.
Don't shop these places that employee the walking dead...
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:1, Insightful)
Complete BS.
I guess you're one of those managers who watch people stream into their store the friday after thanksgiving and say "Oh gee, lots of people today".
Or you run a sales flyer and then say "oh, gee lots of people today".
Hey, fuck people like you who are always looking for an "angle" a way to make 10 bucks by cheating 10 guys 1 buck.
I hope you get cancer and your wife is fucking some illegal alien with AIDS. Then you'll get everything you deserve. Moron.
You're right (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the law.
Or is the law optional... 'cause if it is, I'm going down to the BMW dealer and getting that new 6 series, bangle or not! Seems fair, right?
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
So why is hiring more employee's not an option? There are hourly wages, so if you have 10 employees working 40 hours a week at 10 dollars an hour your paying 4,000 a week. If you have 20 employees at 10 an hour working 20 hours a week you still get 400 man hours at 4,000 dollars. In addition your employee's schedules will be more flexible, sick days won't be a crisis. The training required for employees of places like walmart isn't that difficult and you'll have more leeway in getting people trained with there isn't such a strain on them to pick up the workload right away. What's the down side?
Re:Few Workplace Rights (Score:2, Insightful)
Both these cases suffer from two realities. First, there must be a way for a person to demand the rights, for example a petition of suit. This ability is being systematically dismantled in the US.
Second, the government must be dedicated to enforce these rights. In both countries funding is being actively curtailed to make sure the citizens recieve less protection. This is why, for example, New York state must enforce transparancy laws that would be better suited for a federal court.
As far as taxes, most companies actively minimize taxes. Questionable tax shelters generate big money. American companies have drop boxes in the third world countries while maintaining thier real office in lush American locations.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
which is why I'm glad there was a $1.5 million settlement against Taco Bell last year [nytimes.com]. What if the jury only awarded what was taken? Then companies would just keep doing it and consider the lawsuits just part of doing business.
Instead they should make every lawsuit worth at least 10,000 times more than the money taken. That should make other companies think twice about stealing from employees.
This story is a great example of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
Re:To what end? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a bad idea. I'd point out the obvious analogy to our favorite e-Voting schemes. Most everyone here on /. hates e-voting for this very reason -- but they all (judging on the replies) seem to think that a computerized time clock is somehow more reliable?
But sssh -- better be quiet -- lest Diebold decides to get into the time clock business.
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I don't know about any hive mind, but to my mind, the term stealing means to deprive the rightful owner of something, and obtain it for oneself.
Copying an mp3 wouldn't meet that - as they original is still intact.
On the other hand, shaving time off from an employee time sheet _does_ in fact, deprive the rightful owner of something. Maybe it's not stealing by the law, but it's close enough for me to be comfortable with it. Consider if the manager had, instead, removed the equivelent money from a pay packet - wouldn't that be theft? Even if the pay packed was purely electronic?
And, as an addenda - removing money from someone's bank account without thier permission or knowlede would also be cassified as theft, yet nothing tangible is removed there. That's distinct from fruad, which is 'under false pretenses' - if there is no pretenses, then that's theft [0].
[0] Might be different in your juristriction. This is not legal advice - if you want legal advice consult someone qualified to practice in your juristriction.
Re:How come this is not considered theft? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been following this story for a while, and it seems safe to say that this practice is instiutionalized as WalMart at well as a few others despite claims from head office PR flaks.
Assuming that they only shave "30" minutes (i.e. the lunch break) per day, that everybody makes minimum wage and that it is affect only 50% of their "associates", reported at 1.3 million employees by Walmart.com site = $2,510,625 per day in savings to Walmart versus a $10,000 fine if and when caught.
This law is almost the definition of toothless.
Maybe if it were 1 year mandatory federal sentence for first violation, and more for senior managment who conspire to force store level manager to commit the illegal act in the first place, it would come to a halt. But $10k plus only the 'possibility' of imprisonment isn't going to stop anybody.
Re:I guess you did not read my OTHER post (Score:3, Insightful)
But I can asure you that all the EU states are quickly moving to US-like radical free-market 'societies'. And, in germany at least, these things also happen, albeit on a smaller scale.
I think it's mainly the agglomeration of power by the agglomeration of wealth that causes all the present problems.
Using the money/wealth/power to change the rules (and this topic fits in there) of a market or even politics (for the bigger 'global player's) is the main problem here. Too much power in non-democratically elected hands.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
However, with 20 people half-time, you have 20 shitty jobs that can't support anyone, forcing most of those employees to get second jobs. And if they ever have to take a trip to the doctor/hospital, it's probably going to come out of *your* pocket (indirectly, obviously), because they won't be able to pay for it and won't have insurance to cover it. Those 20 people will also probably have the attitude that "it's just a shitty job, they can get rid of me at any time," wich leads to low morale and poor performance.
It'd be great if everyone could live off of 20 hours a week. But the $6 something that most places like that pay leads to a monthly take home of well under $500, which isn't enough for anyone in the real world. Add a second similar job, and you're almost half-way to the poverty level!
Apparently you are unfamiliar with the term "working poor"?
--Jeremy
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, sure, no one is going to pay those fees. They will just pick up their kid, head home, and..... then what? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find child care for 5 PM to midnight? I won't even mention trying to find overnight care. The care provider has all the power in that situation, not the working parent.
No, they won't really pay $1,000,000,000. They will just pay $100 or $500 or whatever they can't afford, with a warning not to do it again. Hell, my professional employees, who can afford lawyers, have the same problem.
And the next time the employer demands unscheduled overtime, then what? When the care provider drops them, then what?
Sheesh guys, move out of Silicon Valley for a while to a neighborhood where people are fighting to earn a living and spend some time talking to the people who live there. And talk to some of your low-income, low-status employees before you jump on my ass. Just keep in mind that if you are a man, they are most likely hiding all this from you out of fear and shame.
sPh
And this sums up... (Score:3, Insightful)
"if the company's not going to pay me to do my job properly, the customer's going to suffer. not me..."
Actually, the customer can survive without that donut. It's the company that's suffering (as you knew, I'm sure), when they tell all their friends not to go there...
Re:My Workplace (Score:2, Insightful)
The company I have has a policy like this. It's a call center. Our clock in time has to match exactly the time we clock into our phones. If not we are subject to disciplinary action.
So, if your start time is 3:00, you have to clock in on your computer and start answer the phone EXACTLY at 3:00. Also, you may not clock in early or late.
This may sound reasonable, except, we are also required to read all email, memos and respond in kind, PLUS complete any unfinished customer call backs from the previous days business, BEFORE our shift starts. I don't know about you, but I consider this WORK. I'm required to do WORK without pay before I clock in and answer the phone?
So I waste one or two minutes, sitting there, hand poised over the keyboard and phone to make sure I clock in at EXACTLY the right minute. Don't you think this is a tad bit of a waste, when I could just clock in a few minutes early, since I'm already there doing work they're not paying me for?
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. If things go wrong once in a long while, then fair enough. Sometimes you have to do some overtime to make it all happen in a crisis. If you have a 2-4 hour/employee crisis every week, you're just an incompetent manager with no planning skills.
Heh, bullshit yourself. Things go wrong all the time, especially in retail.
What do you do when your night guy calls in sick at the last minute? Well, you either run shorthanded and risk losing business because you don't have the people to handle it, or you have one of your day people work a few extra hours to compensate during the evening rush, then send them home. This has the effect of making the remaining night people stay a little longer themselves, and could add another 6-10 hours total that were not budgeted on those peoples' week, and could threaten to push them into overtime by the end of the week.
Car accidents? And so on and so forth. The more people you have working on any given day, the greater the likelihood that some one or more of them will have a problem that causes others to stay past their time. And that's stuff that's easily visible to the MOD.
How about when you have a busier day than normal (common, and not really possible to plan for) and you are unable to send people on breaks? While this is illegal in some places (WA state, for example), it still happens. That's stuff you really don't see until later, and can also add another unbudgeted 2-4 hours for each employee each week that could throw them into overtime by the end of the week.
And that doesn't even consider that the more people you have working for you for the week, the greater the likelihood that one of them will have a problem that pushes another into overtime.
I've even seen days where more people were scheduled because business was anticipated to be much higher than normal, and they still had to call someone on their day off and ask them to come in for a few hours.
Fact is, if your business is going to survive, you must expect at least a 2-4 hour time clock crisis each week, that means you've got business.
Now, this has the obvious counter "Just schedule everybody to work 30 hours, and you've got 10 to work with." That's great, until the store down the street starts hiring and they'll work you 40 hours and won't have a problem with overtime. Since you still have to be competitive in the job market, you would have to pay more on the hour, making overtime itself an even greater expense when it happens (and it will happen). Not to mention that many retail places, especially in larger metropolitan areas, are running in a permanent state of shorthandedness. When I flipped burgers, the place was always shorthanded. Fact was, people don't want to work in those jobs, and the quality of the workers isn't as good as you might expect (although I must say that some of the best workers and smartest people I've ever known flipped burgers for a living, and loved it). So you not only have more emergencies coming up, you also have higher turnover. People talk about how many in IT only work for a place for a year or so, and that's high turnover? Fuck that. Try hiring three people, starting them all within a week of each other, and none of them are left at the end of the month. And that's when you do pay overtime, gladly, and more on the hour than any other place in town.
That said, deciding to deal with the problem by editing people's hours isn't the solution either. ;)
Re:Here's a more direct analogy that might help (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright infringinment: You make a copy of something without permission. If you photocopy my book, that's copyright infringement, however, I still have the original.
Thieft: If you take my book without permission, that's thieft. I don't have the book anymore.
Do you understand now ? The difference between copying my property and stealing my property is, that I still have the property in the former case.
In any case, the original article talked about the management altering and falsifying the records. This has nothing to do with information wanting to be free; it's a simple fraud and thieft. Management takes away from me the money which belongs to me. That's thieft, according to the law.
Really ? What religion would that be ? Peerism ?-)
It is also within the realm of possibility that no one on slashdot has said that very thing. Fortunately, this is easy for you to prove; just post a link to such a comment.
Or did you disregard this possibility without proper research ? That's not very open-minded of you.
Please do not tarnish my reputation by implying that we are related somehow. I do not have troll blood in my veins.
Considering all the news from USA lately, I must consider this supposed non-americanism a very handy handicap indeed. Especially because americans indeed seem to believe the opposite of my statement. See the Enron case, for example; were any of the executives punished ?
There most certainly was. Namely, the management stealing from their employees payrolls on behalf of the company. Or did you not read the summary ?
Is that trollspeak for conceding defeat ? If so, I accept your surrender. I must admit that I've faced better opponents. Do not worry, thought, time and practice will do wonders. Some day you will be able to block a counter-message with a witty riposte; till then, practice in some easier forum, populated by people of your own skill level. Alt.newbies comes to mind.
Or did you simply meant you will cease talking with your side personalities ? If so, then I congratulate you, for it's the first step towards healing. Maybe some day you can make a passable imitation of a mature adult human being, assuming you have a long natural lifespan. Very long.
Oh my. Maybe I do have a bit of troll blood in myself...
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Insightful)
Employee Theft vs Employer Theft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Insightful)
You just hire extra people, cut everyone's hours below 30, and don't schedule anyone for more than, say, 5 hrs a day. That way, if someone goes WAAAAAAAAY over on any one day, you still don't pay overtime. This has the added financial bonus of keeping all 10 of those half-time people off your employee benefits programs, which represents additional benefits for your shareholders.
Yeah, it sucks for the workers. And no, I'm not suggesting that it's OK to treat Wal-Mart employees this way because everyone knows that Wal-Mart is anti-labor and so you deserve what you get if you apply for a job there. I'm just suggesting that any halfway competent manager should be able to avoid overtime entirely with a little bit of planning and the willpower to continuously screw over his/her employees.