It's 3am. Pay me more!
April 12, 2011 6:51 PM Subscribe
For low-wage hourly employees, how common is it NOT to receive additional compensation for working hours far outside of normal business hours?
Asking for a friend, who, a few months ago, started an inventory/merchandise cleanup job at a big box store. Her normal hours are 5-10am (with some very slight variances) and it is a part-time job with pay a few dollars above minimum wage.
Last week, due to heavy workloads, she wound up working 5-noon on one day, and then going in at 8pm and working until 6am (essentially, an overnight shift on the same day as her regular shift). The manager has asked her to do it again this week. Her employer has been great about paying her for work actually done and has a great clock-in and clock-out policy, but they have not offered any shift differential pay for working the overnight hours.
How common is this in the retail industry? All of my experience when dealing with higher-paid hourly employees is that shift differentials are commonly part of the compensation package, and I was at first a little surprised to learn that no shift differential pay was being offered.
Asking for a friend, who, a few months ago, started an inventory/merchandise cleanup job at a big box store. Her normal hours are 5-10am (with some very slight variances) and it is a part-time job with pay a few dollars above minimum wage.
Last week, due to heavy workloads, she wound up working 5-noon on one day, and then going in at 8pm and working until 6am (essentially, an overnight shift on the same day as her regular shift). The manager has asked her to do it again this week. Her employer has been great about paying her for work actually done and has a great clock-in and clock-out policy, but they have not offered any shift differential pay for working the overnight hours.
How common is this in the retail industry? All of my experience when dealing with higher-paid hourly employees is that shift differentials are commonly part of the compensation package, and I was at first a little surprised to learn that no shift differential pay was being offered.
Best answer: Shift differentials are much more common in 3-shift manufacturing operations, especially if there are union shops in the area. In my experience, retail didn't offer this nearly as much.
posted by TrialByMedia at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by TrialByMedia at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Pretty common, based on my own retail experience. The real question is if your friend qualifies for overtime. That will depend on the state she is working in (assuming U.S.). In New York you don't get paid overtime until you exceed 40 hours for the entire work week. So in theory you could work 40 hours straight and then have the rest of the week off, and not get paid anything above your base hourly rate (assuming there aren't other regulations you would run into, which hopefully there are). But in California your friend would qualify for overtime if she also exceeded 8 hours in a single workday.
posted by postel's law at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by postel's law at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2011 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I have worked 2nd and 3rd shifts about half my working life back when I worked in distribution and manufacturing. Some hired 2nd and 3rd shift employees with a slight shift differential hourly pay. Some didn't.
Sometimes i had to come in during the day and they never took away my differential or paid me more.
Sometimes they switched around our shifts to accommodate" end of month".
Unless she's working overtime and not getting paid for it (as per your state laws), I would assume this is pretty much the norm.
posted by KogeLiz at 7:20 PM on April 12, 2011
Sometimes i had to come in during the day and they never took away my differential or paid me more.
Sometimes they switched around our shifts to accommodate" end of month".
Unless she's working overtime and not getting paid for it (as per your state laws), I would assume this is pretty much the norm.
posted by KogeLiz at 7:20 PM on April 12, 2011
I should mention I wasn't low-paid but was hourly.and worked full-time.
posted by KogeLiz at 7:22 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by KogeLiz at 7:22 PM on April 12, 2011
Response by poster: From what I can tell, her employer is extremely scrupulous about avoiding off-the-clock work, keeping the part-time employees under the requisite number of hours, and avoiding too many hours in the day (or paying overtime).
posted by QuantumMeruit at 7:25 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by QuantumMeruit at 7:25 PM on April 12, 2011
Best answer: You just described the entire 3 months I worked at Walgreens. I didn't even think it was a strange thing until you asked the question.
posted by OrangeDrink at 7:33 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by OrangeDrink at 7:33 PM on April 12, 2011
I wasn't even aware that "shift differentials" existed until I was in my late twenties. Now, in my mid thirties, I'm being paid one for the first time in my life.
posted by pullayup at 7:42 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by pullayup at 7:42 PM on April 12, 2011
Best answer: I worked retail and food service at several big-name organizations, and only got shift differentials at one of them, under very specific circumstances that don't include situations like what you've described.
posted by SMPA at 8:14 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by SMPA at 8:14 PM on April 12, 2011
I'm pretty sure it is illegal, and if you can prove it you can go to court and get back pay (assuming you are going to leave there anyway). At least that's the kind of thing I often hear on the local 'on-the-air' radio lawyer.
posted by eye of newt at 8:59 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by eye of newt at 8:59 PM on April 12, 2011
Best answer: Yeah, it's not uncommon at all. The only time I was paid shift differential was when I worked in a warehouse during the swing/midnight shifts. Any other time (convenience store, retail work) it was business as usual, meaning I was paid the same no matter what time I worked or for how long.
posted by patheral at 10:57 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by patheral at 10:57 PM on April 12, 2011
There are pretty strict rules about how many hours you can work in a day and when but my guess is this is totally legal, you can look up the laws in your state. You don't get paid more by law for working night hours if they are regular hours, which sucks but I don't think this is ever going to change when people are always looking for jobs.
posted by boobjob at 11:35 PM on April 12, 2011
posted by boobjob at 11:35 PM on April 12, 2011
I've been let off work at 10pm and expected to be back at 6am. There are laws that say that companies only have to give you X hours off between shifts. And while I don't know if it applies to these specific laws, I know that smaller companies (less than 10 people maybe?) are not always subject to the same laws as larger ones.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:43 AM on April 13, 2011
posted by IndigoRain at 12:43 AM on April 13, 2011
From what I can tell, her employer is extremely scrupulous about avoiding off-the-clock work, keeping the part-time employees under the requisite number of hours, and avoiding too many hours in the day (or paying overtime).
I manage a department of data entry people, and that's how we do things; I can't speak for every industry, but for the most part difficult hours and lack of overtime is quite common even outside of retail work. At our shop, since the rules say that anything over 40 in a week gets overtime, so every day we tally up people's hours and as we're getting closer to Friday I hand out post-its saying how much they can work for the rest of the week. No matter what, when their end-time rolls around on Friday, they're out the door. We don't to much work outside of usual business hours, but we have in the past, and we've rarely had to pay overtime because we manage everybody's hours so closely.
As for the doing more than one shift in the 24-hour period: my state has rules on how long a break needs to be had after working so many hours, so the problem may not be overtime but that your friend picked up a second shift too soon after finishing the first. To avoid the problem, we have a max of a 10-hour day per employee, even if there's opportunity and advantage for working more.
Your friend could make a quick call to your state's labor office to find out the rules. Not to turn anybody in, but just to lay out their experience and ask, "hey, is this legitimate?"
Also, keep in mind that the biggest factor here may be that your friend disliked doing this work -- the labor laws are a little less strict than one might expect. Although it may seem designed for the exploitation of workers, there's enough wiggle room in the laws to allow people to make up missed hours, to allow for covering sick or absent employees, and enough so that people who overwork themselves to make ends meet can still do so.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:53 AM on April 13, 2011
I manage a department of data entry people, and that's how we do things; I can't speak for every industry, but for the most part difficult hours and lack of overtime is quite common even outside of retail work. At our shop, since the rules say that anything over 40 in a week gets overtime, so every day we tally up people's hours and as we're getting closer to Friday I hand out post-its saying how much they can work for the rest of the week. No matter what, when their end-time rolls around on Friday, they're out the door. We don't to much work outside of usual business hours, but we have in the past, and we've rarely had to pay overtime because we manage everybody's hours so closely.
As for the doing more than one shift in the 24-hour period: my state has rules on how long a break needs to be had after working so many hours, so the problem may not be overtime but that your friend picked up a second shift too soon after finishing the first. To avoid the problem, we have a max of a 10-hour day per employee, even if there's opportunity and advantage for working more.
Your friend could make a quick call to your state's labor office to find out the rules. Not to turn anybody in, but just to lay out their experience and ask, "hey, is this legitimate?"
Also, keep in mind that the biggest factor here may be that your friend disliked doing this work -- the labor laws are a little less strict than one might expect. Although it may seem designed for the exploitation of workers, there's enough wiggle room in the laws to allow people to make up missed hours, to allow for covering sick or absent employees, and enough so that people who overwork themselves to make ends meet can still do so.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:53 AM on April 13, 2011
If she's working over time, she's entitled time and a half. When I worked a retail gig at a big box clothing retailer, I had a day shift and very very occasionally, they would ask the day shift people to work overnight to restock for the new season. I was paid time and a half, but only b/c it was over time. 8 hours is 8 hours is 8 hours. Overnighters may be paid more than daytime people, but other than that, I wouldn't expect any additional compensation.
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:16 AM on April 13, 2011
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:16 AM on April 13, 2011
Until she hits forty hours a week, there probably aren't any labor violations. Federal law only requires time-and-a-half for nonexempt employees that work more than forty hours a week. More than eight hours at a time is not sufficient, nor is working more than a certain number of hours at a stretch, a certain number of days in a row, certain times of the day, or certain days of the week. Forty hours a week really is the magic number.
There may well be contractual provisions to the contrary, but those would be part of a collective bargaining agreement (or more rarely a state labor provision), and it doesn't sound like your friend has one of those.
posted by valkyryn at 5:31 AM on April 13, 2011
There may well be contractual provisions to the contrary, but those would be part of a collective bargaining agreement (or more rarely a state labor provision), and it doesn't sound like your friend has one of those.
posted by valkyryn at 5:31 AM on April 13, 2011
For retail work (what I am experienced with), shift differential pay only start to happen when they cannot find enough employees to staff the shifts. You will often see this during periods of low unemployment, where fast food places and other minimum wage jobs will start advertising extra pay for early/late/overnight work.
(Not to mention, she already is getting above minimum wage for what is essentially a minimum wage job.)
Your friend is totally free to say they don't want to work those overnight hours unless they are getting paid more, but there is no reason why they won't get more daytime hours to make up for it. Or even for the company to hire someone else.
posted by gjc at 6:37 AM on April 13, 2011
(Not to mention, she already is getting above minimum wage for what is essentially a minimum wage job.)
Your friend is totally free to say they don't want to work those overnight hours unless they are getting paid more, but there is no reason why they won't get more daytime hours to make up for it. Or even for the company to hire someone else.
posted by gjc at 6:37 AM on April 13, 2011
"More than eight hours at a time is not sufficient"
That depends. California state law, for example, states:
"California law requires that employers pay overtime, whether authorized or not, at the rate of one and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight up to an[d] including 12 hours in any workday"
For what it's worth, a lot of employers disregard the law. A lot of employees go along with this, because they figure it's not worth the trouble of recovering the cost.
posted by Xoebe at 9:03 AM on April 13, 2011
That depends. California state law, for example, states:
"California law requires that employers pay overtime, whether authorized or not, at the rate of one and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight up to an[d] including 12 hours in any workday"
For what it's worth, a lot of employers disregard the law. A lot of employees go along with this, because they figure it's not worth the trouble of recovering the cost.
posted by Xoebe at 9:03 AM on April 13, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks, Hive Mind, for providing a thoughtful and very fast verification of what constitutes "normal practices". The first few responses really honed in on the question and provided exactly what I was looking for.
As an aside, and at the risk of this becoming chatfilter, I think this thread became an interesting example of how lawyers and non-lawyers can talk about legal issues without ever needing to invoke the bugaboo of "IANYL" or "this is not legal advice". As a lawyer who has (tangentially) touched a fair amount of wage-hour litigation, it was interesting to read impressions of others regarding FLSA compliance. I suspect that some of my labor law colleagues could write volumes addressing or clarifying some of the statements upthread!
posted by QuantumMeruit at 9:41 AM on April 13, 2011
As an aside, and at the risk of this becoming chatfilter, I think this thread became an interesting example of how lawyers and non-lawyers can talk about legal issues without ever needing to invoke the bugaboo of "IANYL" or "this is not legal advice". As a lawyer who has (tangentially) touched a fair amount of wage-hour litigation, it was interesting to read impressions of others regarding FLSA compliance. I suspect that some of my labor law colleagues could write volumes addressing or clarifying some of the statements upthread!
posted by QuantumMeruit at 9:41 AM on April 13, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kimdog at 7:02 PM on April 12, 2011 [9 favorites]