Help Wanted: Time-sheet rigging is a no-no

DEAR CARRIE: My son works for a nonprofit. Instead of a time card, workers have to place their finger on a sensor to clock in and out. The company is incredibly busy, and the workers frequently have to work overtime. But the agency pays them for just seven hours a day even when they clock in at 7 a.m. and leave at 7 p.m. The supervisors change the digital time sheet to read from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with an hour off for lunch. Is this legal? -- Time Bandits?

DEAR TIME BANDITS: If your son is a nonexempt employee, which generally means hourly, the company has committed some "serious" record-keeping and wage violations, said Irv Miljoner, who heads the Long Island office of the U.S. Department of Labor in Westbury. As a nonexempt employee your son should be paid for all the hours he works, and the company's records should accurately reflect that time.

Altering the records makes the underpayment seem like "a willful violation," Miljoner said, and if the company ever faced an audit and legal action from the Labor Department, it could be on the hook for double payments of back wages and stiffer penalties.

"We take a dim view of violations that are so clearly willful," Miljoner said. "And falsification of records is a very serious violation."

In addition, depending on how much your son earned an hour with all the extra time factored in, the company could face minimum-wage violations. The federal and New York State minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

And if the company is deducting for lunch breaks not taken, that's yet another underpayment violation. And New York State law requires employees who work more than six hours a day to get at least a half-hour lunch break.

DEAR CARRIE: My wife is an hourly-paid registered nurse in the office of a doctor who is selling the business to a large hospital. As part of the conversion to the new employer, she is required to go for some blood tests and medical screening that will take one to two hours. She is also required to take a two- to four-hour online education tutorial on various issues and procedures regarding the new company. When the nurses inquired about whether they would be paid for this time, they were told that if they wanted a job with the new company, they had to take the tests and tutorial on their own time. This doesn't seem fair. -- Shortchanged?

DEAR SHORTCHANGED: Since she is being treated as an hourly employee, she has to be paid for all the time she works, as in the case above. The two- to four-hour tutorial has to be counted as time worked unless it meets all four of the following criteria: The tutorial is taken outside of normal work hours; it is voluntary; it is not job-related and no other company work is being performed at the same time.

The tutorial easily fails to meet at least two criteria: It isn't voluntary, and it is job-related, so she has to be paid for the time.

Whether she should be paid for the blood tests and medical screening hinges on if she is already considered an employee of the new company, Miljoner of the Labor Department said.

"If so, she has to be paid," he said.

It's uncommon to find a registered nurse who is treated as an hourly employee, Miljoner said. Registered nurses fall into the professional category because of their education and the nature of their work, and as such they are usually salaried and exempt from overtime or even minimum wage rules. In other words, employers don't have to pay exempt registered nurses for all the hours they work.

But when they are treated as hourly employees, they have to be paid for all their work hours and have to earn overtime when they work more than 40 hours in a week.

For more on what constitutes hours worked, go to http://1.usa.gov/o3pznA; for more on registered nurses and labor laws, go to http://1.usa.gov/qQ1knK.