Slashdot Mirror
Employees Rights in an Emergency?
Waiting-for-Ivan asks: "In Florida in the past month and a half, we have survived 2 hurricanes. During the last one I was within the areas with a hurricane warning (i.e. hurricane conditions are expected within 24 hours). My company (who will remain unnamed) wanted everyone to come in. Those who did not come in had their pay docked (salary or hourly didn't matter) and threatened with loss of their pay for Labor Day. We are not an emergency facility whose services are required during an emergency. Is this legal? Can they make us come in during a hurricane warning (or any other environmental emergency) and if we refuse can they punish us for not doing so? Do we as employees have any rights (and can they dock salaried employees so easily)? What laws are in affect explaining these circumstances?
Workers' rights? You must have forgotten that you live in the United States of Avarice. Now grab your pick axe, and get back to mining that salt.
How ya like dat?
Do we as employees have any rights...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA
oh stop, you're killing me.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Seriously. The job market is a free market like any other. If your employer is being unreasonable and threating you, take your skills elsewhere.
I think you mean "At Will". Right to work means that in most cases they can't terminate you without cause.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
Whether it's legal or not, the management must be fools not to consider what this does to morale!
I guess it's harder to quantify human resources, enthusiasm, and loyalty than missed hours...
I know someone who works in the Miami-Dade school district, and apparently all the teachers were asked to go in to work on Friday (the kids were told not to come in, though). I think the public schools are handled differently from the rest of the county, but nevertheless, it's still sounded a bit ridiculous.
It would be one thing if your company had said anyone who didn't show up would be fired but that doesn't sound like what happened. From your description it sounds like the employeer just wasn't going to pay you for time you weren't at work.
... why should they? Are they really taking anything away from you if you didn't work. If you didn't work then the money you would have gotten isn't yours. They didn't take anything.
The question is
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Why should your employeer pay you for time you didn't work? They didn't dock you anything. If you didn't work they don't owe you the money for said work.
It would be a totally different matter if they had said you would loose your job if you didn't come in.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
So you think the terms of your job should be "protected" by the government, huh? Obviously you've never heard of the Employment at Will doctrine. The answer to your question is yes, you have rights. You have the right to quit. Don't take that right lightly....you might not miss it until it's gone.
If the government is allowed to set down terms and conditions for when your company is allowed to fire you, what's to stop them from setting down terms and conditions for when you're allowed to quit? Sorry, you can't quit this week, a Hurricane is coming we need every able bodied employee available to stack sandbags. Quitting now would cause "excessive loss of profit" to the company and the "Protect our Jobs Act of 2004" says that's illegal. Try again next week, after the flood subsides.
No thanks. Employment at will means at their will, and yours. If you don't like the job requirements, quit. Get off your ass and find a better job. The market is picking up anyway.
The company you work for has a serious problem, and as many others have said before, go see a lawyer about this. The company I work for found a way to keep it's employees safe while maintaining productivity by providing VPN capibilities to us, and having non essentials telecommute when the weather gets bad. (It also makes life easier when I get that 2a support call)
Additionally it may not be a bad idea to search for a new job where your safety is a concern for the company...
Employers are pretty good at working together to lower wages and benefits. If we as employees could have half as much solidarity and less short term kiss-ass we'd all be much futher along. Workers rights are achieved only by fighting for them, and that's the only inevitablity here.
If I'd been there just a month I would have bailed immediately. You want to work for a company like that? You should consider yourself lucky for finding out quickly what kind of management the place had and run the other way.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
When you take a sick day it's unlikely everyone else does too. Work will go on. Money is still being made, so it's not too much of a burden to cover your pay for the day.
When everyone in the facility ups and walks out at once, processes grind to a halt, money is not made. Worse, some processes may not be as simple to restart as merely flipping the on switch. The day's a dead loss from the company's perspective. Expecting on top of that, that they absorb the damage of paying you (and everybody else) for work you weren't there to do, is adding insult to injury.
Yeah but imagine the liability if they made you be there while the roof was being ripped of their building... Those are probably terms they would understand...
This sig intentionally left justified.
I don't know about the US, but if I tell an employee to take the day off because of circumstances, it is not his responsibility and he can still expect to get paid.
:)
If I am told by my boss to take the day off, then I will expect to be paid. If it is a problem for the company then it is their problem if they cannot control the chain of command.
If a company doesn't accept it, then I suspect that all employees getting director level confirmation of any management request will soon cure them of that silliness and make them more consistent in their interpretation of the command chain
If only that's what Labor Unions really did. That's their origin, and that's what they were/are meant to do, and that's what's badly needed, today.
But IMHO, there's a class of people that can smell money, and insinuate themselves into money flows. Some time ago, they smelled Union Dues, and the res is, sadly, history. Also unfortunately, some time back they began to smell Health Care, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
That's not uncommon, but it is illegal. You're either exempt or you're not. Many companies also classify employees as exempt when they really do not fit the qualifications. Anyone who is in that situation and would like to do something about it should contact a lawyer.
This is a recent trend I've been seeing.
Literally, companies sell their soul to make a buck. A software company will release products just to make the stock rise where people inside the company know damn well it wasn't ready for release. Every quarter is a stress packed month. It seems like a never ending cycle where the employees take it.
As for a private company stress levels are manageable and goals aren't outrageous. Plus, there's pay raises every year not the pseudo-stock give away where it takes years to vest.
It becomes very apparent working for a publicly traded company that it's all about the bottom dollar.
The rationale for this discrepancy is that children and teenagers are at greater risk than adults during bad weather. When conditions are bad enough that other employers are telling their people to stay home, schools usually do the same with theirs.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Honestly, I have read the OP a few times and this really doesn't look like a genuine complaint.
... OP - you stupid fuck, get in your car, drive your family to safer grounds for a few days, come back to see if your house is still standing, then drive to see if your company is still intact and if there is a building to host you if you still have a job. If you are so concerned about whether or not you are going to get paid your $200 for the day (assuming $50k a year tech position, which is generous for the area) then fill the day in as a vacation day / paid time off / whatever. You may not get your Labor Day pay either? Good thing you have your vacation / paid time off banked for emergencies - which this was if I ever saw one.
... and you haven't identified with any of the stuff I wrote above - you need to grow up and see the bigger picture. Particularly if you are otherwise happy with your job.
Can't be - a fourth of all computer guys are on the streets out of a job and this guy is publicly bitching about whether or not his employer should pay him a full day's wages if he doesn't come in because of the hurricane
Don't be petty, don't be a little man. If I was a betting man I would bet that there are all kinds of things wrong that you just can't put your finger on, ie. a lot of little things are bad, but not so bad that you can point at any one of them and get sympathy or understanding on the matter - but maybe this one was 'big enough' to go public with so people would understand how bad things really are. It isn't - but it is a pretty good indication of the overall workplace morale there.
OP - If you have lost sight of the bigger picture, I will draw it out for you : you are not happy where you are. The company isn't going to bend to your will, nor are they going to change to make you happy. You need to dust off your resume and from home you need to be surfing Monster.com You need to be networking with your friends and associates to have them help find you a new job. You may need to move to another part of the country to get this new job, so if your house got totalled and you had good insurance - that may be a good thing. The Wendy's up the street is looking to fill a manager's position paying $25,000 to $45,000 a year - and maybe it is time for you to think outside of the box.
If, as a professional, you genuinely have deep emotional issues with the company requiring you to burn a PTO / vacation day for not coming in
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Really? You work for a large defence contractor, who are essentially acting as nothing but a middleman to subcontract you to their own customers, and you think they're not taking several times your hourly rate from their customers for your services? I suspect you're being had! If the company isn't providing security for you as an employer, why don't you just do the contract work directly for the client, at the significantly higher charge-out rate the company is getting for your time?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.