Ideally, an employee does a job and an employer pays them for their work. But employers frequently want more of a worker’s time for the same amount of money or less, and some will go to any length to minimize the cost to their business. Some even lie. There are myriad ways an employer can cheat you, but the following are just a handful of examples. Related: 30 Lies That Employees Tell Their Bosses
Taking Your Breaks
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that wage theft costs workers — especially low-wage workers — roughly $50 billion a year. Companies commonly do this by adjusting time sheets or clocking out workers for breaks or lunch even if they don’t take them.
Related: Pawternity Leave and More Work Perks That Americans Are Missing Out On
Stealing Your Free Time
If you’re “on call” and aren’t being paid a salary or overtime, your free time is now your company’s. There are lawyers who will fight to get that time back, but the law generally isn’t on your side. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Amazon didn’t have to pay employees for time spent in security screening lines to get to their jobs. That case inspired Clarence Thomas to espouse the virtues of collective bargaining, which typically requires a union.
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Snipping Your Tips
There are many ways to steal tips. Employers can skim from the tip jar, pass on fees for credit card tips to employees, pull tip money to pay off-the-books employees (chefs, dish washers, etc.) and even take a share of tips for a friend or relative in a no-show job. Keeping your own record of tips helps, especially around tax time, but taking collective action against employers through a state or federal labor board is more effective.
Snagging Your Pension
Why pay a former employee their promised pension when you can boost profits and give yourself a bonus instead? According to one Wall Street Journal reporter and author, some companies steal their workers’ pension and retiree health-care insurance to enhance profits and dole out bonuses. Since they can declare savings from reducing benefits as “income,” companies have been less shy about freezing or gutting pension plans, slashing benefits, and switching to lump-sum plans.
Related: No Pension. No 401(k). How to Get by on Social Security
Denying Your Pension
Remember when former Federal Bureau of Investigations deputy director Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, just 26 hours before he was scheduled to retire? Though McCabe disputed allegations he had lied under oath, his firing denied him of the ability to take his pension at age 50 and he lost eligibility for a special benefit formula. If your employer decides even a day before retirement that your efforts weren’t up to snuff, your benefits could be denied.
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Stealing Your Overtime
Paying Less Than Minimum Wage
Related: Can You Guess the Minimum Wage the Year You Were Born?
Classifying Part-Time Work As Full-Time
Whether you’re a janitor or tech worker, life as an “independent contractor” can be ideal. But when companies take 40 hours out of your week or more, but classify you as an independent contractor just to duck Social Security, Medicare taxes, and unemployment-insurance taxes, they’re labeling you “independent” while giving you no independence. While the Government Accountability Office said in 2009 that misclassification costs the federal Treasury about $3 billion a year, it’s also costing workers when it comes to benefits, unemployment, and other protections.
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Stealing Your Expenses
Delivery staff for sandwich chain Jimmy John’s sued for their delivery expenses on the grounds that, without them, they made less than minimum wage. Employees are often entitled to reimbursement for certain business expenses. But Trump-era tax laws limited deductions for travel, uniforms, and research — eliminating employees’ last option for reimbursement.
Stealing Your Vacation
There is no federal requirement requiring employees be offered vacation days, and any time off is negotiated between the employer and employee. Unless you are covered by a collective bargaining agreement or belong to a union, your vacation exists at your employer’s whim. While states don’t always require vacation days, states such as California have stringent laws stating that any vacation days you get can’t expire, and either have to be rolled over to the next year or paid out.
Making You Work When Sick
Just as the government doesn’t require vacation days, it doesn’t mandate paid sick days, either. While it does protect up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, the government can’t compel a workplace to give you paid sick days. California and Connecticut do require employers to give employees paid sick leave — but for most people, unless there’s a collective bargaining agreement in place, it’s up to the employer.
Snapping Up Your Travel Time
Snatching Your Weekend
This is another area where the federal government offers few protections, mostly because shifting schedules have made weekend work a norm for many employees. If you’re working 40 hours during the week and are being forced to work on the weekend, though, you’re entitled to overtime pay unless you’re an independent contractor.
Stealing Your Bathroom Breaks
Federal law isn’t all that clear about bathroom breaks, but does say that if an employer allows breaks, employees need to be paid for them. In 2016, a federal judge ruled against a Pennsylvania company that forced employees to clock out when taking bathroom breaks.
Docking Your Pay
Personal leave, unpaid family leave, unpaid sick time, jury duty, military leave, safety violations, missed time during a first or last week of work, and workplace conduct violations are all legal reasons to dock pay. Home and garden store Menard’s faced class-action lawsuits for allegedly taking liberties with those requirements, among other labor laws.
Discriminating Based on Age
The number of people ages 55 and older working or actively looking for work is expected to grow, but research by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco finds that the callback rate for jobs is uniformly lower for older applicants, despite the Age Discrimination in Employment Act being around for more than 50 years.
Related: How to Deal with Age Discrimination at Work
Stealing Your Ideas
According to a U.K. poll in 2015, 1 in 5 bosses regularly steal ideas from employees. Almost all bosses polled have done so at least once. It isn’t exactly illegal, but it’s unethical. Start documenting instances such as this — as well as your ideas — and build a case for the HR department.
Colluding Against You
In Silicon Valley, companies agreed not to recruit each other’s software engineers. That drove down the engineers’ potential earnings and resulted in lawsuits against Apple, Google, Intuit, and other large tech companies. Antitrust laws are in place to prevent things such as this, but big money has a habit of silencing workers’ concerns.
Spying on You
While state laws vary, companies have broad rights to monitor employee internet use, keystrokes, social media, email, and just about any use of a company device or equipment — including the use of GPS devices in company cars. They also have the rights to record employees via audio and video and to monitor medical records and off-duty activities.
Paying Women Less Than Men
The gender pay gap still sits close to 20%, with women making just 83% of what men are paid for the same job. At the current rate, women should reach pay equity by 2116. That divide varies by state, but it also varies by race, with Latina women making just 57% of what male counterparts make.
Busting a Union
A fair workplace often doesn’t exist without collective bargaining, yet some employers continue to ignore employees for the sake of the bottom line. While companies can expose themselves to lawsuits for trying to fight unions, it’s often easier to communicate with employees and make sure they’re paid and treated fairly. Docking them for going to a doctor’s appointment is a small step toward having a union local on your floor.
Billing for Background Checks
Limiting Your Free Speech
Creeping on Your Online Life
According to a CareerBuilder survey, 70% of all employers check a job candidate’s social media — and 54% found reasons not to hire a candidate after viewing their social media. Complaints about old bosses and photos documenting bong rips can come back to haunt you.
Related: 26 Ways Social Media Can Land or Lose You a Job
Paying You Less Based on Race
The Economic Policy Institute notes that in 2016, the median black worker earned 75% of what the median white worker earned in an hour. Meanwhile, the median black household earned just 61% of the income the average white household earned in a year.
Firing You for Seeking a Raise
Employees who accused McDonald’s of firing them for supporting the Fight for $15 labor movement were prepared to take their battle to court. The National Labor Relations Board settled with McDonald’s, but kept open the possibility that another group could sue a corporate parent as a “joint employer” or franchise workers. No ruling was made to prevent similarly motivated firings in the future.
Related: Big-Name Companies Paying at Least $15 an Hour
Firing You for Whistleblowing
Firing You for Your Health
Employees have been fired for having hemophilia, not getting a flu shot, and being obese, to name just a few. Employers don’t mind cutting costs, and if they can save on health care or sick leave, it may be worth the occasional discrimination suit.
Firing You for Being Pregnant
We have laws to protect pregnant women, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission still gets upward of 2,700 complaints a year connected to pregnancy discrimination. Seeing an opportunity to cut costs, some employers appear willing to flout the law.
Denying You Promotions for Parenting
In 2016, high-level female employees of Qualcomm sued the company on behalf of 3,000 female employees who felt they were passed over for advancement for, among other reasons, parenting their children. But it isn’t just women taking action. Fathers have filed discrimination suits against companies after they felt harassed or passed over for assuming parenting duties.
