Vent post? Seeking advice post?
My wife has been the officer administrator of a veterinary clinic for the last three years, and has been salaried at 47k. Aside from her office admin duties she is a vet tech and assists with patients and procedures as necessary. It's a small office, just the one doctor/owner, another vet tech, and a receptionist. Outside of work hours, she's frequently doing other tasks, like washing all the clinic laundry at our home, or driving to the clinic to pick up shipments that are dropped off on Saturdays, or running to the nearby pharmacy to pick up drugs. The owner also frequently calls and texts my wife late at night when she's having personal issues, sometimes to cry and vent at her, and often ends up having to spend her evenings and morning doing reschedules when they have to scrub days. Aside from being a hassle these haven't had a financial impact to us because she's salaried.
In February we had a baby, so she took two months off for maternity leave. (interesting note: during the time of her absence the clinic is down drastically in revenue, because nobody was doing the follow ups and scheduling etc). When she came back, it was agreed on that she'd be working from home on Wednesdays to do admin tasks like payroll, followups, reschedules, etc. Less she has to do on the other days while she's in office. Since the office is closed on Fridays anyway this is great, because we only need to pay for daycare three days a week.
Today, on Sunday, via text, her boss tells her that she's decided to switch her to hourly at her equivalent salaried hourly rate, and that she isn't going to pay her to work from home on Wednesdays because she doesn't believe she's working the whole time (she fucking is, I promise you). She also expects her to clock out while doing her breast-pumping now, because she shouldn't have to pay her to breast pump, which requires 15-20 minutes every 3-4 hours – but of course it's okay for the doctor and the vet tech to smoke for 15 minutes every hour. She has to clock out to eat now also – they've always just eaten between work work tasks, she's taken “taken a lunch” the whole time she's been there. It really feels like the boss doesn't want to deal with her new-mom needs and is punishing her for having a baby.
Effectively this is going to cut her pay in half, losing 25% of her workweek not being allowed to WFH on Wednesdays, plus the extra clock-out time for pumping and lunches. What rubs salt in the wound is that before her maternity leave was even over, she came in and worked a day to help her catch up on payroll – WHICH SHE STILL HASN'T BEEN PAID FOR! My wife has been crying all day and doesn't even know what to say to her boss. Is it even legal to completely change an employee's job structure like this? I told her she needs to express that the reason she's been salaried up to this point is that she's isn't being paid to have her ass in a seat X hours a day, she's being paid to operate the office, which means various duties and irregular hours. If she's moved to salary and no longer allowed to work from home, that means anything that is needed outside of business hours is no longer her concern, and if the doctor wants to call her to cry about a boyfriend or panic attack she's not picking up without being paid for four hours. I don't even know what else.
As a new parent already stressed out about money, I'm laugh-crying over here. All so the boss who does a million in revenue annually can save $20,000 a year