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?
It is implied on this page that they don't HAVE to give you the day off. It reads:
Judging by that, it's more of a suggestion than a requirement... But I also found this on this page:
So, it sounds like people are suing for being forced to work during the hurricane, which might be a slightly different situation than yours.
Sounds to me like your employer is just a major league ahole, and you might not be able to do anything about it.
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
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.
Florida is a "right to work" state, meaning that they can terminate you for pretty much anything OTHER than race/age/sex/religion (i.e. things explicitly covered by law.) As far as docking pay, that's also legal, as long as your weekly average hourly wage (pay/hours) doesn't fall below federal minimum wage.
It's a weasely thing to do but there's probably not anything you can do about it.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
My company has a policy that we're "always open." Last year, we experienced a blizzard so severe that the city issued tickets to any non-emergency vehicles on the road. The power at the building was also knocked out. Yet when we got back to work, we were expected to make up the time or use Paid Time Off. The excuse made by management was, "Sometimes you have to use you PTO benefit for the company's benefit." (!)
I'd been working there all of a month, or I probably would have contacted a lawyer. If it happens again, I'll definitely be exploring a class-action suit. In a state of emergency, when it's not safe to go to work, it's completely unreasonable to expect employees to come in. If it's not illegal, it ought to be. If I were you, I'd contact a lawyer.
Right...
I live in Florida in an area that was sure to be hit by Charley, I left Thursday and got a hotel room for me and my family ( I live 1 block from the Gulf in a low lying area). My work was open that Thursday until 3PM when the "Official" notice came to leave. The hotel I found was full that night and had I waited to leave until I was Allowed to by my employer I would've had a tough time finding a room and may have had to sit in an evacuation center for a few days. Anyhow, I did get a "Written Notice" from my employer for not coming in that day which I signed with a note saying that my family comes before my job.
The good news is that I hated that job and I quit today anyhow. (they're sleazy snakes) all in all, F any employer that asks you to stand in harms way so they can make a buck. If more people took this approach employers would have to be more considerate. I'd guess your employer is a publicly traded company, where Money is the only diety.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Seriously! This is far beyond the realm of an "Ask Slashdot"! I can see wanting to get a feeling for the experiences of others, but how many times did you ask "is it legal"? Laws may vary from region to region, but I cannot imagine in an area that is about to become a disater area that your employer would be allowed to do this.
That being said, TALK TO A LAWYER ABOUT THIS. You should be able to get at least a reasonably cheap 15-30 minute consult to get the answer you need. Also, talk to the appropriate parts of your state's government, ie THESE GUYS.
Hope that helps.
-jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
During the hurricane a state official was on the television reporting that many similar events had occurred. She mentioned to call the state attorney. The relevant information is available at http://myfloridalegal.com/contact or you can just call 1-866-966-7226.
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...
The Sun-Sentinel has an article! Here's a snippet:
So apparently there's nothing in law, but you might be able to put a little fear in your employers pants by calling the hurricane hotline. Good luck!US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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-
My concern here is that you aren't patriotic enough if you are asking such a question. Stop whinning. It is your patriotic duty to go to work rain or shine. It is important that you work unpaid overtime and even volunteer nights and week ends. Don't complain about your salary either, otherwise we'll outsource your job you unpatriotic-GDP-lowering-French-lover-commie.
No, "Right to Work" is a political euphemism for a law that prevents labor unions from negotiating a contract with employers that prohibits them from hiring non-union laborers.
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.
... for showing his true colors. Things are improving(praise W). Find a human boss, and leave.
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.
You know, I'm mighty tired of hearing this perennial bromide - Frankly, it's NOT that easy for employees to switch jobs (Especially in this market), and if you think ANY market is a "free" market you need a lesson in real-world economics.
I'm not sure what the exact laws are, and they may vary from state to state, but at least where I live there are laws against traveling on public roads during a state of emergency unless it's required for public safety/service. If you're caught, you'll get ticketed or fined or whatever.
Somehow, for Y2K, my employer managed to convince the county that all of us in IT were "critical" should there be any emergency, and we got stickers to put on our company IDs stating that in the case of an emergency, the police were to allow us to travel. What a load of BS. Nothing happened, fortunately.
My route to work now takes me through one of the most snow-prone sections of the state twice a day. I've already told my manager that once winter comes, if things look ugly, I'll be working from home or taking a PTO day. No job is worth putting my life at risk trying to drive through white-out conditions. Lots of employers like to say "take care of yourself and your family first" - let's see if they actually mean it.
Docking people for not coming in during a hurricane? That's just underhanded & sleazy. Get out of that job, management clearly doesn't consider the employees people, but rather slaves.
Hear! Hear!
/. peeves. It hasn't been an employee's market for a few years now. Even if it were, you're being selfish by moving instead of trying to make the employer see the error of their ways. Not only because it only helps you in this instance but also because the employer will just keep doing it.
... and between that and the threat of annoying a supervisor and putting your job in jeopardy in the long-term, we should be -helping- the few people who are considering acting on the injustices, not giving them flippant responses.
The "if you don't like it, take your skills elsewhere" argument is one of my biggest
Will a person always succeed at changing things? Certainly not
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Find out your employment stats by talking with your HR department. They can tell you if you are classified excepmpt under the "Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)".
If you are exempt, and your pay has been docked, you have a clear legal case. If you are non-exempt, then your employer is just a jerk.
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.
No, "Right to Work" was correct. It's a political term like "Partial Birth Abortion" (not the actual medical term) or "PATRIOT Act" (anything but patriotic). It "protects" employees from having to join unions, in case they choose not to enjoy the protects many unions provide, and instead give all that power back to the employer. It's just a set of union-breaking laws given a nice name.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Have you tried calling your union? Things like this is what they are there for!
print "Yet another p{erl,ython} hacker\n",
...(or, "Can you say 'passive-aggressive'?")
1. PUBLICITY...
Find out which other workplaces (near yours) are/aren't doing the same as your employer.
Even better, get friendly with people at other jobs who have the same problem.
Then all of you call the local TV news shows, radio talk-shows, and newspapers, and ask them to do a story publicizing the situation and the names of the offending employers.
And after the storm is over, DO post the names of those employers anonymously on some very public forums, and then anonymously email links (to those threads) to the head of personnel and the CEO.
If it's a publicly-traded company, find out which socially-conscious funds are investors -- especially union pension funds, California state employee pension funds, etc.
Anonymously tell the funds about the story, and cc your message to your CEO, AND to your corporation's department of investor relations.
2. Ask your doctor to give you some sedatives because of the extra "anxiety" caused by the coming storm. Call in sick because you're impaired by the tranquilizers. They can't deny your sick-pay.
3. Have a slip-and-fall injury in their parking lot, due to the bad weather. Get sick-time off. Better yet, get disability pay and workmen's-comp.
Better yet, sue their asses if you're hurt badly enough (btw, this is another idea for point #1: tell the company's liability insurer about what the company is doing).
I just went through Frances too (see journal) and my employer has decided to pay all the salaried people and not pay all the hourly for the days the company was closed (three - Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday); the worst is that the hourly people are the worst paid in the company, so this affects them even more than it would affect anyone else. Needless to say, there's a lot of complaining, and when the economy starts to turn and get a little healthier, I suspect the company will lose a lot of valuable staff.
The positive side is that there is something you can do about this that doesn't involve lawyers - contact FEMA. FEMA has an emergency assistance program that covers lost wages through hurricane related office closures. My employer is "helpfully" encouraging its hourly staff to do this. I don't think it's ethical, especially as my employer isn't in the line of work where it'll lose business because of this (it'll force everyone to have stress attacks for the next month to catch up, but if you think anything's going to be delayed...) but there is that option.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
In preparing for Y2K my boss and company arranged many contingency plans not only within business centers, but to the point where I had a complete development environmet set up at home. When 9/11 occured and access to NYC was restricted we were all told to stay home until further notice unless critical customer facing support required us to return to the office. My entire department covered their jobs from home.
Several hurricanes and nor'easters and snowstorms have limited access to our offices. Even last weeks Republican National Convention was considered a severe enough inconvenience that policy was "work from home if you can" and I did. I put in at least 2 12 hour days because without the commute I had no reason to get up from the computer.
We have reached a point where everything possible we can do from home instead of the office has already been arranged thanks to broadband, VPN, instant messaging, VOIP, and VNC. We are at the point where it is a simple question "Will I get more accomplished if I work from home today?"
You live in Florida, Hurricane country, but the same would apply to wildfires, earthquakes, tornados, flooding, and any of the newsworthy weather that comes from the Atlantic Ocean.
If local, regional, state or federal authorities have ever restricted travel or access in your area for any weather or "act of god" reason, or really anywhere for Homeland Security reasons, your company should have a stated policy about those possible events. The company should also have business contingency plans for such events.
Remember, your family and their safety and comfort is your real first priority job. Where you go to work is just what you do to pay for it. Let your fight or flight reflex guide you.
As I have been composing this I have received an e-mail notice for "National Emergency Preparedness Month". Check the Homeland Security web page for details.
Negotiating the terms of my employment is *my* right...I'd rather have a choice in how I do it. You like unions, and that's fine...don't assume that everyone else finds them a perfect fit.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
In a free country, people should be free to choose whether to join a labor union.
THe natural move of the employment market is to fuck over employees at all opportunities. I see no trouble with hindering that. Employers do NOT have the right to treat their employees like dirt, and should be regulated against doing so. And forget slap on the wrist fines for doing so, give them jail time (this goes for all corporate crimes).
Problem with market competition? One simple law fixes that- if you want to sell goods or services int he US, you must follow US labor, polution, etc laws (or higher) at all your production facilities worldwide. If you don't, the US market is closed to you. Would it raise domestic prices? Yeah, it would. But it would just be piercing an artifical bubble, the same will happen when eventually the 3rd world gets similar legislation or we run out of cheaper and cheaper places to outsource to anyway.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
problem: people priding themselves on making it to work regardless of the weather; a few years ago during the "blizzard of the century" (it really was, for here; >32" of snowfall w/in a 12-hour period) I knew a lot of guys who went into work knowing that the place was closed (usually because the boss had better sense...) just so that the next week (when your area's average annual snowfall is seldom >32", the authorities aren't likely to be prepared to dig the place out overnite...) they'd be able to say to the boss "Hey, I was here, where were YOU ?!?!"
On the other hand, whenever we get 160-mph winds they're usually confined to the trailer parks...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
In quebec, because the workers movement have been strong at some point, there is a lot of laws to protect workers, and the company is supposed to protect their worker from all kind of problems. Also, there is a sorta 50% unionization rate in here, which mean that you'll probably be part of an union if you work here, and can use the money from your union to sue the company.
Otherwise, a solution can be to join the local branch of the IWW , which is mainly an open membership union, which can help you for free, if you demonstrate some interest in the labour movement, by showing up to meetings and stuff. This is also a good way of learning a lot about your state labour rights.
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
... as long as you agree Corporations booting out unions is also part of a free market.
you know, the real world doesn't work like the public sector. shit, did i say "work" and "public sector" in the same sentence? anyways, in the real world, you are paid by people to work. can they make you suck toilet water through a straw while naked, and make you sing the Marseilles (which would be the worst part!!)? no. but, what if they had sensitive data? what if they had customers with urgent needs. what if lots of things. employee/employer relationships go both ways. if the work conditions are bad, get a new job. if not, STFU and work. sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but the "unionize" thing didn't work really well for the supermarket workers here in so. cal. eh?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
The very existence of corporations is a state intervention.
If a bunch of people want to form a business, and draw up some contracts to that effect, all well and good. But creating an artifical immortal legal "person" with all the rights but few of the responsibilities of genuine humans, that shields the partners from liability for their actions? That's a huge intervention in the marketplace. It's just one that's been around so long we don't even notice its presence.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It sounds like you work for Wells Fargo. To be fair, they did call me up and told me NOT to come in during a particularly cold blizzard. However, some companies think that they will lose global business if they aren't physically at work. However, the truth was (as Wells Fargo found out) is that just because NY is open does not mean that we need all 100 data operators to process deposits when Twin Cities is in a blizzard that is shutting down everyone else. They had to pay for 100 employees to process what a small handfull of employees could have done in no time. The only deposits that came in was what peole got ot the banks before the blizzard hit. I am almost willing to bet that the CEO who ordered the work during Hurricane preparation, was in another state or otherwise safe from ever having the hurricane reach him and his precious little body.