Hired a year ago at a large corporation.
Work load varies from an hour of work to 8+ hours of work. However we are assured 40 hours a week for payroll purposes. But if it’s less than 8 hours worth, we’re told to “watch our teams chat in case we are needed”.
About 3 months ago, they implemented a “cto” system. Company time off. Where in the event that we work 4 hours, and then don’t have more any more tasks, they cover the other 4 hours with CTO.
Sometimes we won’t have any work the next day and are put on CTO the entire day. But told to watch our phones in case anything comes up, which sounds a lot like being “on call”.
And this wouldn’t matter too much, but except we are told CTO doesn’t accumulate time off, and if you use 1 or more hours of CTO, you are unable to earn overtime or holiday pay. You are capped at 40 hours.
An example:
I work 8 hour days for 3 days. The 4th day I work 2 hours, and they use CTO to cover 6 hours. The 5th day I work 10 hours. This would put me at 42 hours that week, but the fact that one day I was put on cto prevents me from getting overtime.
The same for this weekend. I have paid holidays. Christmas is one. However I’m being told I won’t earn any money for Christmas, as I had a few hours of cto this week.
This feels illegal in some manner. If not, what’s stopping factories or something from working a laborer 15 hour days, and on the 5th day, working then 7 hours, using 1 hour of CTO, and preventing paying overtime.
I live in the US.