Photo: smallbusiness.chron.com
As more corporations use software to track hourly employee hours some have tipped the data collection rules in their favor. American Airlines is facing a suit from 400 employees for shorting their hours, Kroger and Montage are facing similar suits. We realize that corporations are under great pressure to cut costs on labor to increase profits and meet shareholder and Wall Street expectations. However, since the wages of production employees and non-supervisors have been essentially stagnant for the past 5 years we ask: who is really getting hurt? Corporations have all time low taxes, all time high stock buy backs to juice executive salaries, and all time cash nearly $1 trillion stashed in most offshore accounts.
Meantime employees are at the lowest point of wage power in the workplace in decades with reduced health benefits at greater cost, competition for their jobs from other workers on the Internet, automation, corporate mergers reducing the number of jobs available, and union busting laws. So who are the wage scales tipped toward? Corporations. Average hour worker income has continued to fall when inflation is included.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Real Investment Advice – 5/15/18
So, when companies use software to track employee hours, then ‘round hours up’ for breaks or deduct breaks that didn’t happen – like for nurses in healthcare at the University of Missouri Health Care using time tracking software where they cared for patients during their breaks but the software recorded a break anyway. The nurses are losing money, and even more than just wages respect for the work they do.
Next Steps:
Employers wake up! Work is a social contract that is two-way and should be equitable, time cards should be signed by employees in some manner before wages are dispersed. The signing which used to be performed is a confirmation that the employee and employer understand the work being performed and the fair hours completed. Software should not just automatically capture data and cut checks. When time cards were used, filled out by employees – now done online, yet most systems allowed for electronic signatures. In haste, these companies are just using the software to capture the hours, record the hours and post checks. Company IT departments set the rules of the software sometimes in favor the company not the employee. These rules changes can be for just minutes or more but at infrequent times so it is hard for employees to discern what is happening to their paycheck. Time tracking software should be required to show an audit trail for the employee to see to ensure that it is a just capture of their hours. Let’s be clear when these systems don’t treat employees fairly, and allow for confirmation of hours worked the employer is committing a real in justice to the employee. Corporations need to review the process of their time recording software for hour employees, ensure adequate safeguards are in place for employee input and install these systems with employee support.