Hi hi! I'm in Michigan. I am a full time, wfh, non exempt, salaried employee. Up until a couple weeks ago, my team and I never had to manage or record our hours (never clocked in/out or noted any OT). For at least 1.5 years, we've been getting paid our respective salaries (40 hours) no matter if we take long lunches, break for therapy/dr appts, leave early, etc. It was made clear that these instances are flexible as long as our work for the week has been completed/in a good standing or we make up any “lost time” another way, our pay never took a cut or an increase. Pro of this: everything was real flexible. Con: we all worked a LOT of OT this year (2023) ….all unpaid, but we just took it as inevitable occupational hazard in our busy line of work. We work late …and to the bone… through lunches a lot of times, to make sure our work is complete/that our clients are getting the work we promise them. (We are overloaded for sure, but that's a whole story.)
2 weeks ago, we were made aware by HR that from now on, even us non-exempt salaried employees are required to record hours/clock in and out just like the hourly employees. They claimed we need to clock in/out now “because the company needs to follow the Michigan Labor Laws that require it”….which side note, clocking in and out is in fact not required by law in Michigan, it's up to each company's rules, but anyway…
Since this notice, there has been lots of back and forth between management, HR, and my team. We are brushing up on our company's handbook and the MI Labor laws, (AND are requesting retroactive pay for all the many many hours we worked OT this year since Jan, this is in progress) but I wanted to put this out there for advice specifically on the issue of OT….
My team and I are now being told from HR that we are prohibited from getting time-and a half OT, instead our OT hours are “half time.” We are told that this is a preventative measure meant to dissuade us from working more than 40 hours a week. I translate this to mean that half time is ….punishment? We were told this is in place to prevent us from “wanting to work more than 40 hours because we want to get more money.” A de-incentivized “strategy,” I guess? But we all have a gut feeling/some knowledge that all non-exempt salaried employees must receive time and a half in overtime, period.
Is this standard or are we being fed more bs?
PS I'd also like to know if we have a shot at making a case that we need time and a half OT because we often work in advance/extra hours in OT to prepare for planned leaves of absence like a planned vacation, maternity leave or surgery recovery time (scheduling things out for our clients in our absence).