Smasharoo wrote:
My understanding is that salaried pay is based on the assumption of approximately 40 hours worked per week. You actually have an hourly pay rate, but it's just assumed that you always work 40 hours for paperwork purposes. Obviously, if your employer is regularly demanding that you work significantly more hours than that, and you don't feel you are being compensated sufficiently, there are a few avenues you can pursue.
The point being that if you choose not to come in to work on a day that is a normal workday for you, you can be docked pay.
Hahahaha, holy ****, no. Is that really what you thought?
Work 150 hours this week, paid for 40. Work 32 hours this week, paid for 32?
My god, you are ignorant.
Um... Every employer who employes salaried employees has some kind of contract that dictates terms for the employment. This almost always includes some kind of penalties for employees who don't show up for work during time periods when they are expected to be working. This is why you have to do things like fill out time cards even though you are on salary. You have to take sick days when you are sick. And you have to take vacation days if you just decide you don't feel like coming in to work.
And yes, that contract most definitely can include things like docked pay. Now, most of the time, when you are on salary, unless you **** off your manager or something, there's an assumed leeway in your work hours. That's kinda the whole point of salary, as you mentioned earlier, but it's not as absolute as "your pay isn't dependent on how much you work". It's not hourly, but your employer still usually expects you to show up for about 40 hours of work a week. But it doesn't have to be exactly that many hours on any given week.
The point being that if your employer tells you "you must show up for work on Tuesday, or take a vacation day, or get your pay docked", he's choosing to invoke the part of the contract where he "may" dock your pay for not showing up. And the reason why they tend to make a point of this during the holidays is because if they don't, people will just not show up for the whole week even though only 1 or 2 days are actual holiday days, which is unfair to those who are actually playing by the rules and spending vacation time to take the extra "slow days" off.
Most of the time, they don't care about this. I can tell my boss "Hey, I came in and worked all day Saturday, so I'm going to stay home Monday", and he'll be perfectly fine with that. Or even "It's really slow right now, I'm going to head home early today", and he'll be fine with it because he knows that when it's really busy, I'll stay at work extra hours to deal with whatever is going on. But people abuse the slow times around the holidays, so employers have to put their feet down so that the rules are fair for everyone. Again though, this is something they could do any time they want to.
If the assumption for your employment is that you work Monday through Friday, 8 hours each day, that's what you are expected to work, and other than holidays or vacation or sick days, you can suffer penalties for not doing so. Note, I say "can", not "will always". Again, the fact that employers are more lenient at some times than others doesn't mean that this is some evil unfair thing they're doing.