Closing Case Managers in Name Only Heather Jennings worked as a customer service
ID: 454942 • Letter: C
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Closing Case Managers in Name Only Heather Jennings worked as a customer service representative for Verizon and was paid on an hourly basis. However, she was told that she needed to be at her workstation 10 to 15 minutes before her shift officially started in order to log into her computer, open databases, and get her equipment adjusted so she could start work precisely on time. All other employees in her department were given the same instructions. Jeffrey Allen was a sergeant in the Chicago police department. He left work each day at 5:00 p.m. but continued to receive dozens of text messages, emails, and calls on his department-issued Blackberry until 10:00 p.m. or so each day. Allen felt compelled to respond to each contact, sometimes taking a few minutes, other times an hour or more. No one at his precinct told him he had to do this, but he felt subtle pressure to do so. For years, Omar Belazi, a former RadioShack store manager, logged 65-hour workweeks, and stayed late to clean the store’s restrooms and vacuum the floor. He also felt pressured to work all weekend each week to help meet the store’s sales goals. Regardless of the hours he worked, however, he received the same monthly salary. Belazi gradually tired of the long hours, extra work, and stress, and he left RadioShack. Each of these cases has something in common: what an employer can expect of its employees in relation to what it pays them. They have also each been the subject of a lawsuit. At the heart of the argument is a decades-old law that mandates overtime payments for hourly operating employees who work more than 40 hours a week but allows firms to pay salaries to professionals regardless of how many hours they work. The Fair Labor Standards Act (as discussed in this chapter) specifically exempts those in executive, administrative, or professional jobs from overtime payments. But because so many jobs have shifted from manufacturing settings to service settings, and because the nature of so many jobs has changed, the lines between different kinds of work have blurred. That is, when someone works on an assembly line it’s pretty simple to step up to the line and start work, and the tasks themselves are clearly defined. Service jobs, though, often have more subjective “boundaries” and may require more start-up time. Heather Jennings acknowledges that she is an hourly worker, but lodged complaints in order to get paid for the extra 10 to 15 minutes she spends each day getting ready to work. Jeffrey Allen, meanwhile, has filed grievances and wants overtime for the extra hours he works each evening. RadioShack eventually settled a lawsuit filed by 1,300 current and former California store managers for $29.9 million. In similar fashion Oracle recently paid $35 million to 1,666 workers who claimed they were misclassified. And Walmart was recently fined $4.8 million for denying overtime pay to employees working in store vision centers who were classified as managers but were expected to work extra hours performing nonmanagerial jobs.Footnote Case Questions From a management perspective,
what are the key issues in this case?
How might you respond if your employer (current or future) directly or indirectly requires you to work extra hours with no additional compensation?
What might you as a manager do to ensure your employees never feel compelled to work “off the clock?”
Explanation / Answer
Key issues in the case:
The key issue in the case is working overtime and the payment related to this.
When worked overtime, employees feel pressured to work, tired of the long hours, extra work, and stress. There should be overtime payments for hourly operating employees who work more than 40 hours a week. Firms pay salaries to professionals regardless of how many hours they work.
How might you respond if your employer (current or future) directly or indirectly requires you to work extra hours with no additional compensation?
If it is the case, I would clearly say no as I do not want to take extra work, stress and pressure without any additional benefits.
What might you as a manager do to ensure your employees never feel compelled to work “off the clock?”
The best thing that a manager can do is to link the extra work with some benefits. This would have a positive impact and more workers would be interested to work off the clock.
Assume that the company is a manufacturing unit. Each worker is given a target to finish 8 pieces in 8 hrs, with a payment of $10 per piece. Now, to encourage the off the clock work, a manager can come out with a plan like this – workers working off the clock will be paid $12 to $15 depending on the number of pieces produced.
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