Chapter Text
is this wage theft?
by ALISON GREEN on Summer 12, Year 1
A reader writes:
My new friend who's worked like, serious corporate jobs before said what’s happening at my job sounds like wage theft and suggested I write in to you. I'm in a small town in the Ferngill Republic, and this is my first regular job. I only have two coworkers—there are some other part-timers and weekend folks, but I never work with them—and one of them is the kind of person who runs straight to our boss with anything, so I couldn't ask her, and the other is like 10 years older than me and told me to just keep my head down because no one else in town is hiring. But my dad, who isn't around right now because of his job, always told me to do the right thing and not to let injustice stand, and my new friend says he's right, so I guess I've decided that if this really is wrong and I can do something, I will.
It's an hourly minimum wage job at a store. We get two ten-minute breaks and a half hour lunch each shift, all unpaid. We clock in and out for those. I've been working here for a year but it wasn't until I sat down to do my taxes for the first time a few weeks ago that I noticed that my payslips don't match up to my schedule. I was getting paid for almost an hour less than I worked every week, and I only work two days a week, so that's a lot!
I asked my older coworker about it, and he said our boss takes 5 minutes off our clocked hours every time he sees us go into the bathroom or finds us talking to someone if it's not about work. Here's the thing: I only go to the bathroom during my breaks! He specifically told me when I was hired that I needed to 'tend to my personal needs' on my breaks unless it's an emergency. So I've done that. And it's a small town. Everyone knows everyone. When people come in to shop, they know me and they say hi and of course I say hi back, but I keep working (I mostly stock shelves and sweep the floors) even while I'm talking to them. But if my boss sees it, there goes 5 minutes of my pay.
I started taking stealth pictures of the time clock whenever I clock in and out, and my next paystub showed I was short 95 minutes across four days of work in the pay period. It's bad enough that they change the color or logo design of our uniform shirts once a year and next month I'm going to lose about three shifts' pay to buy the new ones—I can't be coming up short every single paycheck, too!
Is this illegal, though? I feel like it is. The bathroom breaks, at least, right, since I'm taking them on time that's already unpaid?
Oh, boy. Yes, this is illegal. This is actually several layers of illegal, as I found out when I consulted with an acquaintance who works in labor compliance in the Ferngill Republic.
In your country, all hourly workers must have one 15-minute PAID break for each 4 hours on shift. Workers in certain highly physical jobs get a paid break for every two hours. Shifts longer than 4 hours must also allow for a half hour unpaid break. They got that right, at least, but you're actually getting shorted 15 minutes of pay—the ten-minute break you take and the five minutes your manager extracts for your bathroom visit—as well as being shorted five minutes of break time. Both are illegal.
The Republic's labor laws are also very clear that anything, benefits and tax withholding aside, that drops workers below minimum wage for the pay period is illegal. I'm talking about your uniforms here. They can make you wear uniforms. They can even make you purchase them and submit receipts back to the company for reimbursement, but since deducting them from your paycheck would drop you below minimum wage, they simply cannot deduct them from your paycheck at all, even if they reimburse you in a future paycheck, which it does not sound like they are doing. You cannot be made to buy your own uniforms without full and prompt reimbursement, period.
May I just say how much I am coming to admire your country's labor laws? Because last but not least, any wage theft—and everything above is wage theft—must be reimbursed at a 3x rate by the employer. You (and all your colleagues) are not only owed all the pay you have been denied for every short break you clocked out for and every 5 minutes your boss 'deducted', you're now owed triple that amount. A judge is also likely to order compensation for the mere fact that you were only allowed 10-minute breaks when the law requires 15.
In conclusion, I strongly urge you to gather up all your evidence and submit it, with a formal complaint, to your Regional Board of Labour and Commerce. Your employer is required to provide you open and ongoing access to all your paystubs for the last two years, minimum, so since you've only been there for a year you don't even have to ask anyone to get your hands on all your paystubs from the very beginning. Check your employee portal online, it's likely they're somewhere in there. If you can't get at them, that's another violation to report to the Regional Board, who are required to keep the origin of all such reports anonymous. Keep yourself anonymous by not telling anyone at your place of employment about it, and good luck.
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Posted in LAW + ORDER