Legal Question in Employment Law in California

I am a Production Manager at a manufacturing facility and I work for a COO who is from another country. He has only been in the US for a little over a year and is still learning our labor laws. His main goal is to produce at the lowest cost possible even at the cost of "doing wrong by the people." Recently I asked an employee to work overtime to help us achieve our production quantity for that day. At a last minute request from me, he agreed to stay to help the company. Later, the COO told me that since the employee was staying overtime, we would adjust/reduce his hours worked the next day in order to compensate for the cost of overtime. I do not agree with this since the employee was requested by us to stay for overtime. Further, there is another employee who works overtime, gets paid for the overtime, and is never asked to adjust his hours worked to compensate for the cost of the overtime. Is it legal to force an employee to reduce their work hours simply to compensate for working overtime at our request, and if so, would it have to be consistently applied to all employees?


Asked on 1/13/12, 2:00 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

Unfortunately there is nothing illegal about "doing wrong by the people" unless it is in violation of a specific labor law. In the situation you describe there is no such violation. No employee has any right to hours or pay other than to be paid the agreed wage, and overtime if earned under the law, for whatever hours the employer chooses to employ them. A manager not only has the legal right, but has an obligation to owners or shareholders to minimize the cost of labor at which the required output is produced. If a manager can work employees overtime, and then cut hours later, so the overall production required is met at the same cost as if there had been no overtime, that's a good manager - unless its impact on employee morale and retention winds up costing more in the end. But that is a matter for the MBA's and CPA's to figure out, not the JD's. As for treating different employees differently, businesses and managers discriminate between employees all the time. Some get raises, some don't. Some get promoted, some don't. Some get perks, some don't. Some get more hours or more overtime and some don't. There is nothing illegal about that either, unless the choices of who benefits and who doesn't are based on specific legally prohibited reasons - such as race or gender discrimination, retaliation for protected activities, such as union organizing or being a whistle blower under a specific statute, or in violation of a union or other contract. The discrimination can be totally rational - reward good employees - or totally arbitrary and capricious. As long as it's not based on a specifically prohibited basis, it is legal.

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Answered on 1/13/12, 2:52 pm
Terry A. Nelson Nelson & Lawless

I'd be happy to have as clients any employees who do not get properly paid their OT. The employer can not legally shift the OT hours to the next day instead of paying OT. The hourly employee gets paid for anything worked over 8 per day. Period. However, if I understand you, the employee had his hours cut the next day to 'compensate' so that he only earned the dollars equivalent to a 40 hour normal week. That probably is legal

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Answered on 1/13/12, 4:40 pm


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