If you have to clock in and clock out for work, you know how important it is to be on time.

What would you do if your pay were docked for every minute you were late even if you worked later than your scheduled shift? Would you assume there was nothing you could do about it, or would you get the union involved?

In this story,
a union saves the day, the payday that is!

Let’s read all the details.

Dock pay for being late by two minutes? Enjoy paying massive overtime

I worked in an electricity retailer call centre. It was highly unionised, but the management tracked login times to the minute.

One incredibly ridiculous thing they did was if you were a minute or two late, they would literally dock your pay by that many minutes.

It wasn’t really enough for us to really notice, and I’m sure they didn’t actually save any money – I mean, if you were 15 minutes late I could understand not paying but 3 minutes late?

The union found out.

Well, eventually the union discovered what they were doing, and were completely upset that they hadn’t been consulted about this horrible move.

This is where their MC comes in.

The union demanded logon and log off times for everyone in the call centre.

Management didn’t think this through.

What management hadn’t counted on was that all of us would often need to wrap up calls and clear the call queue before the call centre could officially close.

This often meant that operators would leave several minutes after their shift.

On bad occasions it could be 15-20 minutes delay before they could clock off, but mostly it was only a few minutes.

Time to pay (literally) for this mistake!

The union made management recalculate everyone’s pay for the year based on clock on and clock off time.

They also pointed out that staying past end of shift triggered penalty rates.

It turns out everyone (and I mean everyone!) had spent more time wrapping up calls at the end of the day than they were late clocking on.

Each of us got paid for lost wages, at overtime rates.

It cost them a fortune and they never docked the pay of anyone who was late ever again.

That worked out well! I’m glad everyone got the pay they deserved.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is messed up.

Another call center employee shares their experience.

Here’s another perspective on time clocks.

Doesn’t anyone care about employee morale anymore?

Three cheers for overtime!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when
a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.

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Employees Had Their Pay Docked If They Arrived A Few Minutes Late, But When The Union Found Out They Proved The Employees Deserved Overtime
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