Businesses often take a variety of steps to limit payroll expenses. They negotiate to pay workers the lowest amount they can justify based on the law and the market. They control workers’ schedules carefully to prevent overtime expenses.
Those practices are legal. However, sometimes businesses cross the line and violate worker rights and the law in an attempt to limit staffing expenses. For example, someone in the human resources or payroll department at a company might make adjustments to workers’ timecards in a bid to deny them the wages that they have already earned. In some cases, workers facing surprise adjustments of their time clock records may have grounds for a wage and hour lawsuit.
Hourly employees deserve pay for their time worked
California actually has more robust payroll protections for employees than many other states. There are more scenarios in which workers might be eligible for overtime pay. Employers also have an obligation to pay hourly workers for all time worked, without exceptions for small increments of time that may apply in other states.
In other states, employers can justify having workers clock out and then complete a few minimal tasks at the end of their shift without pay. In California, such actions violate the rights of a worker. Similarly, employers have to pay workers based on accurate timekeeping records. They cannot modify the time that a worker started or ended a shift to reduce what they pay.
The California courts have had to rule on cases involving time clock rounding practices. In many other jurisdictions, employers can pay workers in five-, 10- or 15-minute increments instead of down to the second. The California courts have ruled against such practices.
Employers adjusting time clock records by rounding the duration of a shift may have violated the worker’s rights. Employees may be able to request unpaid wages related to timekeeping adjustments, including rounding the time worked into increments larger than a minute. Thorough records are a key component of any compensation request following wage and hour violations by employers.
Reviewing a company’s payroll practices can help workers determine if they have grounds to take legal action. A wage and hour lawsuit could be a reasonable response to an employer’s questionable payroll adjustment or their time clock rounding practices.