Q: Is it legal my husband's job put the workers into teams of two and now each teams hours are combined and split in half?
My husband works at a car dealership & he does get a certain amount an hour (I believe $20). He still actually gets paid per job he does (each job on a car is worth a specific amount of hours) so he gets paid $20 per hour for however many hours the specific job is worth. like say a car job he does is worth 6 hours & he gets that job completed he gets paid $20 an hour for those 6 hours so $20x6=120 before tax. Something they recently implemented is they devided the workers into teams of two & they combine the weekly hours of the two teammates then split the combined hours in half so let's say my husband works 30 hours that week & his partner only worked 20 hours that week that's a total of 50 hours when combined; so when those hours are split in half they would both get paid for working 25 hours which means my husband would lose 5 hours he actually worked for & his partner would gain 5 hours he didn't actually work for. This is something the person over Tuscaloosa Hyundai decided to do.
A: The Fair Labor Standards Act is federal law and very clear that an employee is entitled to be paid for all hours worked BY THEM. This "pooling" is illegal as you have described it. One of the members of the team is losing pay so the other team member receives pay. Husb. is not required to pay the hourly wage of a co-worker. You should report this to US dept. of Labor or your state labor commissioner. I recommend you contact several attorneys in your area that practice this type of law, as soon as possible. Thank you for using Justia ask a lawyer.
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