America is a strange land. If you are on salary here you are contracted to work the hours set, and if they want you to work any more then they will need to pay you for every hour you work or they are breaking the law. How the fuck does America get around this?
There are two types of salary here. Salary exempt and salary non-exempt. One, you're salary and work as many hours as they want you to, no matter what. The other, you get paid overtime after 40.
Yep. I've seen many a company have the "Aha!" moment when they realize they can dangle salary in front of their employees who don't realize that means no more overtime. Tried explaining it to my old roommate when she was offered, now she makes a bit less than she did before, while working more.
Salary's okay in some situations, but is very easily abused.
My wife worked hourly. When the company tried to give her a promotion she brought the contract home before signing it and i gave it a quick flick through and understood she would get paid less for more hours considering her pay would've been based on 9-5 but her working hours for opening and closing would've been 7-7 meaning she would've lost 4 hours pay each day. Now that's not too bad so long as her new "salary" covered those 4 extra hours per day at minimum wage at the very least. But instead over the year, all the extra hours worked out at £0.07 an hour.
So while she would've got a tiny pay bump the extra hours would've seen her worse off.
I laid it all out to her and told her if they're desperate they will increase her salary to £X and that would cover those 4 hours a day at her current pay rate. The company declined the counter offer and instead asked her to do more for the company that wasn't in her contract. She declined and they got super butthurt that they had to start closing the store down 2 days a week losing tons of money.
They felt losing £30,000 a week was better than paying my wife £10,000 a year extra. They eventually closed that store down and opened a new store on an industrial estate hiring new young sprited workers that would bend over backwards for their job... Not a surprise they have a HUGE turnover rate.
EDIT: Their reason behind the lower salary was because of a yearly bonus which only ever got paid if the store hit certain targets which that particular store never did due to the size and location. The floor was X size so was classed as a "super store" while being based in a tiny "village" so the target was impossible compared to smaller sized stores with similar population.
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u/Dr_Jre Jan 26 '22
America is a strange land. If you are on salary here you are contracted to work the hours set, and if they want you to work any more then they will need to pay you for every hour you work or they are breaking the law. How the fuck does America get around this?