Employer BS

I did a Duck on it: https://www.google.com/search?q=can...ly+charge+employees+for+broken+dishes&spell=1

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-libra...r-charge-me-for-broken-or-lost-equipment.html


http://www.laborlawyers.com/files/42425_South Carolina State Law Booklet (March 2013).pdf


Sounds like your employer invented a new kind of wage deduction, over and above normal insurance deductions. My guess is what you signed was something authorizing your employer to make the deduction. And in 7 days they figure they will be able to take the money from who ever they determine messed something up. It's the same as charging a restaurant employee, for breaking dishes. I think normally no matter what you break, they cannot take an amount which would put you below minimum wage. I guess you would not have signed allowing them to do it, unless you figured you would get fired because you did not sign. I wonder if your paid weekly, your fined $300 and it puts you below the minimum wage, would they reduce the fine because they cannot pay you less then minimum wage or would they split the fine up over more then one week?

What's tough is they have to be able to prove you broke something. But on the other hand, I guess you would have to prove you didn't break it.

edit: I did some quick rough calculations. It worked out if you are paid weekly, for them to deduct a $300 fine you need to work 40 hours a week at $15 an hour. Looks to me like if you make less then $15 an hour a $300 fine would likely put your pay below the minimum wage of $7.75.

... :) heck if you broke something and it only took an hour to break it, they are paying you by the hour ain't they? ... Then they should only dock your wages during the time it took to break it. Makes no sense at all to dock your wages when you performed your job correctly.

What I read was charging the employee for the cost of the broken equipment. I don't think I saw a place where they could 'fine' you. Heck, why not 'fine' employees 100 million dollars instead of a puny 300? They don't want to charge the employee for the cost because they would have lost 14 employees last year. Wow, mess up one time at work and you owe the company all you'll ever make in a life time. I wonder if they charged the cost of a lost Space Shuttle to the employee who didn't glue a tile on correctly?
 
PD's point is well taken, and I read nothing in the statute that permit's this particular deduction; as Paul said above, they have invented a new kind of deduction, but my experience with these sorts of items is that, as PD said, just because they posted it and made you sign the notification paperwork doesn't make it legal IF it is ever challanged in court. Many of the fine print exclusions companies post in warranties and/or statements of their liability to employees or consumers are so much smoke, posted in hopes that the people to whom they say it applies will just accept it rather than consulting a lawyer. Live with it, and if it never becomes real, fine; on the day it affects you, call a lawyer - my bet is that you will win if it ever comes to that.
 
interesting Paul,
I sometimes have trouble following your posts, they make sense sometimes, my A.D.D. just kicks in. this one make perfect sense.

after reading the file laborlaw above, I see that in the section they choose to use 41-10-40 is talks about hours worked, and wages.
we usually work 4 10's and they like to post weekend work sometime after lunch. this Monday, they posted to have a meeting at lunch time (2hrs away), to tell everyone to go home, till next week.

what I find in this read is very interesting. it says they are required to give 7 days notice to changes. ie they cant have a shutdown without a notice. An when I was hired, I signed up for a 40hr workweek. yeah that aint gona fly, but it might pull a little weight when I need them to move my PTO time I took 2 weeks ago (20hrs workweek) to the other week so I can claim and get paid this week. (unemployment). without taking more vacation time. we get paid Biweekly.
 
its not enforceable. the only way to identify a part is the paint marker'ed on number, a magnetic tag barcode, and the process paperwork. how hard would it be to switch out a badpart's paperwork & numbers with a goodones. about a minute. I wouldn't pass the buck on someone else, but in that case how exactly could one tell that the part # it says it is, and is actually the part # that it say it is.
 
I think you may need to read between the lines , looks to me that this company is not going to be there much longer, I am a CNC 3d programmer and never heard of anything like this , I would be pro active and start looking for another job now before the locks go on the doors... jmo
 
edge22 said:
What a bunch of BS you guys need a Union bad!!
Click to expand...
THAT is a fact!! You'd never hear of such nonsense if you had a union.
Secondly.....any such agreement signed is signed under "duress". It is axiomatic that NO one signs their rights away, unless some other right is being threatened by the enforcer.
No agreement signed under "duress" has validity, or is enforceable. Indeed the company is very foolish, and lacks competent legal counsel to even
think about committing such a fraud on the employees.
There is no difference, legally, in what this company is doing, than in a gunman advising you to give him the contents of your wallet, or he will empty the contents of his pistol into your head.
This is a threat to you, to lose something of value....your job....unless you agree to some penalty which you have no say about.
 
stickySC said:
interesting Paul,
I sometimes have trouble following your posts, they make sense sometimes, my A.D.D. just kicks in. this one make perfect sense.
.
Click to expand...
Don't feel alone.....sometimes after I write and post stuff...I have trouble following them. BUT they make sense (key word here) SOMETIMES!! ;)
 
Those posts help you think outside of the box, maybe give you a different pov. which I find value in.

IM not sweating the job issue, I took it to gain CNC experience. The fact that the parts are so big, puts a dampener on me really getting into programing side, even before the fines. I was brought in to be a welder for a project that got sub'd out. only welding ive done for them was, getting a AWS qualification.
 
$300 wouldn't begin to touch the repair bill on the CNC machine I was manning just before I told them to "shove it." A couple of REALLY WRONG instructions and... Oops. Sure sorry about that. I quit.

A great example of how screwed up corporate thinking (if you can call it thinking) in this country has become. I remember when the most important thing in a company was its employees - after all, it's the employee that creates the product that keeps the corporation operational. I thought Illinois was bad! This takes the cake. Time to find a new employer sounds like.

Dan
 
Illiniois is bad...driving the US into the dark ages...and apparently SC will be there to turn out light. I remember when the most important things for every member of the company were the products and the customers...Unions changed that, now the products are junk and customers are treated like junk. Too many activists in 'Merica, especially from Illinois, not enough execution
 
Were talking back and forth to each other because of computers and computers being able to do what we need to talk back and forth.

Computers can also track what you and I do in our daily life, but they can track very closely what we do while working. Believe it or not there are data bases on most every job you can do, giving facts about every aspect of your job. Many if not most jobs today are defined and refined to such an extent, your employer only needs you to do specific tasks and only specific tasks. If you do what is asked correctly and the employer makes money because of what you do, that is all they need you to do and nothing more. If there is a possibility of adding additional work to your day, then it will be done. The amount of work you do is meaningless, so long as you do it correctly. If you don't they will either replace you with another worker or a machine to do exactly what they need done. When I worked I was without anyone physically seeing anything I did on the job for 20 years and more. That's how far and few between any management ride along might be. But they knew exactly where my work vehicle was to the minute. How long I would sit idle and have the engine running. I'm doing paper work or sorting parts and the engine was running because it was either very cold out or very hot out, was not an ok reason to have the engine idle. They knew exactly how much time I spent at a client fixing something, what parts I used. By the way I was also tracked on not only how long I took to do something, but how many parts it took to fix something. One part to fix one problem was the only acceptable usage of parts. And it also must not be an expensive part. Something being worn out and requiring a few parts to fix, would be a black mark on my record. You see they knew exactly how many parts on average would be used to fix anything. There data base knew what fix any customer complaint of any problem would require. I was told what parts to stock and I had better not spend an extra cent getting something delivered to me to fix a problem, because I did not have the part. My parts delivery cost was tracked and I had goals to meet to keep part delivery cost down. My customers were also surveyed and since I was the last person to see any customer, even if they were unhappy with the person who answered the phone in India or the Philippines, I had better know they were unhappy and make them happy before I left. I had to meet a 95% customer satisfaction rating. Oh by the way, if a customer told them they were satisfied with everything I did and happy it got done so quick and that I was such a nice and knowledgeable repari preson, ... that would be a black mark on my record. You see, my customers had to be 'very' satisfied with my work and the whole experience, ... just being satisfied was not good enough.

Pretty much all your company is telling you is you must preform your job correctly or they will get rid of you. They don't care if you do more and in fact do not want you to do more. They only want you to do exactly what they tell you to do and do it without error. If you can do it, eventually they will push more work on you from others who cannot and they will reduce their work force. They will also later explain to you that because your job now is a more simple job because you only need to do exactly what they want, your job no longer requires such a highly skilled person and either you will accept the wage cut to a lower skilled job classification or they let you go. There not letting you go because your job no longer needs done, there letting you go because your job no longer needs a highly skilled person to do it.

... coffee's gone and so am I. ... :)
 
Higher quality standards require a higher skilled worker, not less skilled. I'm not being let go, but is a possibility. production is off until they straighten out a major oversite that was made by cutting time out of the process. a process im not 100% familiar with, but shortly before the meeting I was looking at the issues / function of the part. with a process check, that is on my print. and realized what was going on an had a WTH were they thinking moment, before attending the meeting and finding out that, what I was looking at is, where the direct problem was.

most places have 2 kinds of production workers.
#1 The ones that just sign stuff off and get stuff done quickly and don't really pay attention to the details.
#2 The people that take the time to look over what they are doing, and address issues found.

I might just stick around, take a few more classes, and see if I can work myself into a better job title like Engineer, or Quality Manager. might not payoff now, but could later on a resume.
either way its not that bad,with the 90 minute cycletimes. but they better think twice before they cut into my check.
 
SC's right to work laws, that favor a Company over workers is bringing companies to the state. Large manufacturing Companies are relocating to SC, like Boeing, BMW ect. Union workers from other states have even tried to sue companys for relocating to SC
 
DirtyDan said:
$300 wouldn't begin to touch the repair bill on the CNC machine I was manning just before I told them to "shove it." A couple of REALLY WRONG instructions and... Oops. Sure sorry about that. I quit.

A great example of how screwed up corporate thinking (if you can call it thinking) in this country has become. I remember when the most important thing in a company was its employees - after all, it's the employee that creates the product that keeps the corporation operational. I thought Illinois was bad! This takes the cake. Time to find a new employer sounds like.

Dan
Click to expand...

o0234
m06t09;
ect..
(programchange )
g50 s2000; (was s50)
g90 g00 g59 x400.0 z500.0 t09;
g01 z-500.0 f9000.0;

something like that, [cycle start], run like hell.
 
You gotta LOVE this bunch !!! They give you answer's from all angles,all diffrent view's, a old wise man once told me a good man does not look for work it finds him. Sometimes even though you love the work,its in the wrong location.
 
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