Years ago, I worked for a copier company called Allstate, which was later acquired by Ikon Office Solutions. Shortly after I retired, Ikon was purchased by Ricoh.
Back in the Allstate days, we got a new employee who was already trained on all the copiers we serviced but had recently moved to Houston from Louisiana. One of the reasons he moved was because the company he previously worked for paid overtime on a sliding scale.
I had never heard of such a thing, and when he explained it I was sure that it couldn't be legal.
Here's how it worked:
Assume he made $15 per hour. For 40 hours, he would make $600.
If he worked 50 hours, you would expect him to make $600 plus 10 hours at time and a half or $225 for a total of $825 for the week.
Under the "sliding scale" approach, he would still make $600 for the first 40 hours, but the other 10 would be paid at 4/5th of his base pay (40 hours/50hours), or $120 for a total for the week of $720, which, in effect, drops his hourly wage from $15 to $14.40. If he worked 60 hours, the time over 40 would be paid at (40/60X15) or $10 per hour for a grand total of $800 - effectively dropping his hourly rate from $15 to $13.33.
I did some on-line searching today and as far as I can determine the practice, while rare, is still alive and well today. While it may be a reprehensible way to treat employees, it apparently isn't against the law.
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