Thanksinadvance
New Member
Location: VA
I work for a large company that pays workers a base hourly rate as well as a productivity bonus. This incentive bonus is based on a set performance percentage scale. Copies of this incentive scale are given to all new employees and are also posted in a public area.
Paychecks are paid weekly for the previous week's work and incentive bonuses are included on the same check.
It's a warehouse job where the productivity rate is based on how much product you can pick and prepare for shipment (basically, how many items you can pick per minute). The system that keeps track of this rate essentially begins counting how much time you have worked and how many items have you have picked from the second you log onto the system when you first begin work for the day.
There are three important aspects of this productivity rate to know.
1. ANY time spent not picking items for shipping lowers your rating. As such, supervisors are allowed to manually enter time spent doing authorized work that is not related to the shipping of product (such as meetings). Such entries allow the supervisor to make sure that your productivity rating isn't harmed by things that are outside of your realm of control.
2. Productivity incentive bonuses are based off of a DAILY average. The bonus is per hour, so if I work 10 hours my bonus would be my productivity bonus * 10. It is also stated in company documentation that any productivity bonus earned while working over time hours will also be paid at a 150% rate.
3. Additional benefits are based on a weekly average of the daily averages for the week.
These bonuses are very hard to obtain but can lead to a several hundred dollar weekly bonus. There is even a computer system that allows us to log in and shows us our productivity levels. We've been told that these numbers are accurate and are the numbers which we should go by to keep track of our rates.
The main problem is that a specific individual in the company keeps altering our productivity levels. He does this by going into the system and removing time entered by supervisors for downtime caused by other company authorized activities and by not giving the proper amount of downtime for breaks (The system is programmed to automatically recognize that workers will not be picking product for two fifteen minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. Any additional breaks must be entered manually if a worker is asked to stay for longer than a typical shift).
His actions lower our productivity ratings, often drastically. This lowers our amount of pay and can actually cost a person their job. He doesn't even deny his actions normally. Instead he tries to shift the blame to things such as supervisors labeling their time entries wrong, but he fails to correct these entries when made aware of the situation (including by supervisors). Theses are mistakes that would not be the employees fault or under the employee's control even if true.
I'm not sure if this matters, but he also tends to do this after the work week has been completed and doesn't inform employees of their loss of productivity ratings.
Is this legal in VA, considering the fact that a productivity incentive rate was agreed upon and is documented? If the productivity rating was earned during overtime hours, would this be a violation of overtime wage laws (I doubt it, but thought I'd ask)?
Also, this company has been in trouble with the federal government / dept. of Homeland Security in the fairly recent past and was forced to make some major business changes at the time (they are very open and bitter about this).
Their computer system does keep track of time added and removed. It even lists the person who altered the information. So there are records that would show the altering of time and who did the altering.
Also, the same person programmed the system to lower our rating if we take a full 30 minute lunch break. They are very open about that. Yet we are only allowed to clock in after 23 minutes on lunch and the the 7 extra minutes is rounded up so that we are not paid for that 7 minutes. Isn't that illegal (from the aspect of having people work without being paid)?
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
I work for a large company that pays workers a base hourly rate as well as a productivity bonus. This incentive bonus is based on a set performance percentage scale. Copies of this incentive scale are given to all new employees and are also posted in a public area.
Paychecks are paid weekly for the previous week's work and incentive bonuses are included on the same check.
It's a warehouse job where the productivity rate is based on how much product you can pick and prepare for shipment (basically, how many items you can pick per minute). The system that keeps track of this rate essentially begins counting how much time you have worked and how many items have you have picked from the second you log onto the system when you first begin work for the day.
There are three important aspects of this productivity rate to know.
1. ANY time spent not picking items for shipping lowers your rating. As such, supervisors are allowed to manually enter time spent doing authorized work that is not related to the shipping of product (such as meetings). Such entries allow the supervisor to make sure that your productivity rating isn't harmed by things that are outside of your realm of control.
2. Productivity incentive bonuses are based off of a DAILY average. The bonus is per hour, so if I work 10 hours my bonus would be my productivity bonus * 10. It is also stated in company documentation that any productivity bonus earned while working over time hours will also be paid at a 150% rate.
3. Additional benefits are based on a weekly average of the daily averages for the week.
These bonuses are very hard to obtain but can lead to a several hundred dollar weekly bonus. There is even a computer system that allows us to log in and shows us our productivity levels. We've been told that these numbers are accurate and are the numbers which we should go by to keep track of our rates.
The main problem is that a specific individual in the company keeps altering our productivity levels. He does this by going into the system and removing time entered by supervisors for downtime caused by other company authorized activities and by not giving the proper amount of downtime for breaks (The system is programmed to automatically recognize that workers will not be picking product for two fifteen minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. Any additional breaks must be entered manually if a worker is asked to stay for longer than a typical shift).
His actions lower our productivity ratings, often drastically. This lowers our amount of pay and can actually cost a person their job. He doesn't even deny his actions normally. Instead he tries to shift the blame to things such as supervisors labeling their time entries wrong, but he fails to correct these entries when made aware of the situation (including by supervisors). Theses are mistakes that would not be the employees fault or under the employee's control even if true.
I'm not sure if this matters, but he also tends to do this after the work week has been completed and doesn't inform employees of their loss of productivity ratings.
Is this legal in VA, considering the fact that a productivity incentive rate was agreed upon and is documented? If the productivity rating was earned during overtime hours, would this be a violation of overtime wage laws (I doubt it, but thought I'd ask)?
Also, this company has been in trouble with the federal government / dept. of Homeland Security in the fairly recent past and was forced to make some major business changes at the time (they are very open and bitter about this).
Their computer system does keep track of time added and removed. It even lists the person who altered the information. So there are records that would show the altering of time and who did the altering.
Also, the same person programmed the system to lower our rating if we take a full 30 minute lunch break. They are very open about that. Yet we are only allowed to clock in after 23 minutes on lunch and the the 7 extra minutes is rounded up so that we are not paid for that 7 minutes. Isn't that illegal (from the aspect of having people work without being paid)?
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
