Reducing pay for unpaid hours to minimum wage?

[swalsh411]

You seriously want to argue that telling a new employee "you may, at some nebulous point in the future, be involuntarily terminated, in which case your pay rate will be retroactively decreased" constitutes sufficient notification? The spirit of laws prohibiting retroactive pay decreases is that it is fundamentally unjust to tell somebody you will pay them $15 an hour and then after they have worked thinking they would earn $15 an hour, tell them they will only be getting $10 an hour for time already worked.

 

[justalayman]

Let me put this another way.

Who thinks that a law that says "pay rate may not be reduced for hours already worked. period. end of sentence." actually means "pay rate can be reduced for hours already worked if you agree to this as a condition of employment"?

You cannot legally agree to something that is illegal.

well, actually there are situations where it can happen, legally.



in my browsing I ran across this from some other forum posted 5 years ago:

So having a friend in the HR department, I've gotten wind of some policy changes at my company which to the ears of everyone that's heard it sends up a **** ton of "damn, that's gotta be illegal" flags. Doing my best Googling, I haven't been able to come up with anything.

Basically, the plan is that if someone (non-contracted, exempt and non-exempt) quits without giving two weeks notice, they're going to retroactively decrease their salary to minimum wage for that pay period. We're on two week pay periods. So if I decided on the Friday ending a pay period that I wasn't coming back, they're going to reduce my salary for the two weeks that I already worked to minimum wage ($7.00/hr in Ohio) and pay it out the following Friday when I was scheduled to receive that paycheck.

I also ran across this but have not verified it:

N

otice of Wage Reduction

Ohio does not have any laws addressing when or how an employer may reduce an employees wages or whether an employer must provide employees notice prior to instituting a wage reduction.

and while this is in Nevada, it deals with a retroactive pay cut based on a contract. I didn't see anybody screaming about the legality of it.

and they weren't given ANY notice of the possibility:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/county-seeks-retroactive-pay-cuts-workers-union-calls-move-excessive

 

[cbg]

Federal law does not prohibit retroactive wage reductions.

Ohio law does not prohibit retroactive wage reductions.

Please then explain how a retroactive wage reduction is illegal in Ohio. Which is the only state that matters for the purpose of this thread.

 

[swalsh411]

Federal law does not prohibit retroactive wage reductions.

Ohio law does not prohibit retroactive wage reductions.

Please then explain how a retroactive wage reduction is illegal in Ohio. Which is the only state that matters for the purpose of this thread.

It doesn't matter in OH, and I've already said that. I was specifically addressing an opinion that was made that it would be legal to tell an employee upon hire that their pay would be retroactively reduced if they were terminated regardless of whether or not State law permitted retroactive pay reductions. As I'm sure you know, threads often go beyond the original question posted by the OP.

 

[cbg]

At no time did I say or imply that it would.

 

[NvrEndingLife82]

Wow! When I posted this, I did not think there would be so much debate on this. I, myself, did not know the labor and/or contract laws of Ohio, and was mainly curious because a friend was saying she saw quite a few things in the contract that she was sure were illegal and/or unenforceable.

It would not surprise me though. I did not find it out until recently, but the company that owns the nursing home I work for was raided by the FBI in July in regards to financial documents. And I know of one thing that they offered to me was technically illegal, and I have had a few people verify that one. I will have to start digging around on Google to see if the other suspected parts of the employment contract are illegal or not. I really did not see appropriate forums to post them in...unless I make one post about the employment contract in the hiring/firing forum.

Thanks everyone!

 

[ecmst12]

You can post your questions right here.