At My Job...Is this legal?

[Tha-Realist]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? (Michigan)

I work as a telemarketer. We make a base pay that never changes (unless we get a raise, but other than that, it's a weekly check of the same amount) along with commission if we get a sale. Business is usually pretty good, but this month, it hasn't been. So earlier today, our boss gave us a sheet of paper to sign, stating that if we don't get a certain number of leads per week, they will deduct money from our base pay (not our commission, but our base/weekly pay). If we don't sign it, we will be fired. (In fact, a co-worker got fired for asking about it at the end of our shift.) Is this legal?

 

[cbg]

That depends.

The law requires that you be paid no less than minimum wage (the higher of state or Federal, if different) times the number of hours worked, plus overtime if you work over 40 hours in a work week. If the deductions take you below that, it's illegal. If it does not, it's legal.

 

[commentator]

If you are fired, file for unemployment benefits. This sort of deal or operation is sometimes so shady they're not paying in their required taxes, but if they're not, you don't need the job anyhow.

And if they ask you to do something that can't be done, as in come up with x number of leads when the leads are not there, or sell so many of whatever, when you can't sell them, this is called "spinning straw into gold." They can ask, and they can fire you for not doing what they ask, but they cannot show that they had a good misconduct reason to terminate you and keep you from being approved for unemployment unless they show that your failure to produce what they asked of you was due to you goofing off and not doing the job right deliberately.

Firing someone for asking a question about the pay policy, while it is legal, is not firing them for a valid misconduct reason.

 

[Tha-Realist]

If you are fired, file for unemployment benefits. This sort of deal or operation is sometimes so shady they're not paying in their required taxes, but if they're not, you don't need the job anyhow.

And if they ask you to do something that can't be done, as in come up with x number of leads when the leads are not there, or sell so many of whatever, when you can't sell them, this is called "spinning straw into gold." They can ask, and they can fire you for not doing what they ask, but they cannot show that they had a good misconduct reason to terminate you and keep you from being approved for unemployment unless they show that your failure to produce what they asked of you was due to you goofing off and not doing the job right deliberately.

Firing someone for asking a question about the pay policy, while it is legal, is not firing them for a valid misconduct reason.

But with Michigan being an "At Will" state, would we even have a leg to stand on? They can fire you for any reason. And if it's not a valid one, they can make up a reason. They can use goofing off as a reason (like you said) even if we weren't, can't they? Because there's no proof either way. The only positive point is that my leads have been up to par this past week, so the numbers are in my favor.

 

[cbg]

49 out of 50 states are at will, and the 50th state recognizes the at-will doctrine in some situations. At-will doesn't affect either the legality (or illegality) of a change in pay, or your eligibility for unemployment.

 

[commentator]

Agree. The employer has no special say in the decision whether or not you are approved for unemployment benefits. This means that it's actually better for you to get fired from a job than to quit it, in that way. Because if you quit a job, it was you deciding to quit, your choice. But if they fire you, you are out of work not by your own choice, but by the choice of the employer. It is not illegal for them to fire you for a whimsical reason, or any reason they want to, pretty much, but if they cannot demonstrate to the unemployment system that they had a valid misconduct reason to terminate you, then they can't keep you from being approved for unemployment benefits, though it will cost them more tax money if you are approved. This means they aren't ever happy about having a terminated employee be approved for benefits.

They may even lie to you and tell you they won't LET you draw benefits, or that you won't be approved, they already know this, yada yada. But file for benefits, and don't be terribly upset if your best efforts aren't good enough and they fire you. As I said before, you're not the first person whose boss has made impossible demands on them, taking the poor economy out on the backs of the workers, using threats to try to prod them into more productivity.