LAW WITH REGARD TO UNPAID TRAINING, UNPAID WAIT TIME, DOWNTIME, ETC.

I was doing some research and just thought I would share it here. 

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http://en.allexperts.com/q/Employment-Law-924/2008/3/unpaid-training.htm

Question
I'm a part time security officer.  The contract is changing hands where i work (large corporate facility)...the location stays the same but a new company takes over the new contract next week.  The incoming company has advised everyone that they must attend a mandatory unpaid training class.  Is this legal?

Answer

Expert: Shirley McAllister, CPP, PHR
Date: 3/28/2008
Subject: unpaid training

It is not legal.

Here is the ruling from the Department of Labor Website at

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs22.pdf

Lectures, Meetings and Training Programs: Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time only if four criteria are met, namely: it is outside normal hours, it is voluntary, not job related, and no other work is concurrently performed.

Since the meetings are not voluntary you must be paid to attend them.

FURTHER:

29 CFR 785.27 - General.
Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time if the following four criteria are met:
(a) Attendance is outside of the employee's regular working hours;
(b) Attendance is in fact voluntary;
(c) The course, lecture, or meeting is not directly related to the employee's job; and
(d) The employee does not perform any productive work during such attendance.

IF THE ABOVE 4 CRITERIA ARE NOT MET, THEN THE EMPLOYEE MUST BE PAID FOR THE TRAINING/MEETING TIME.

29 CFR 785.28 - Involuntary attendance.
Attendance is not voluntary, of course, if it is required by the employer. It is not voluntary in fact if the employee is given to understand or led to believe that his present working conditions or the continuance of his employment would be adversely affected by nonattendance.
__________________

ICs and unpaid trainings:

http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59022

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FURTHER
(FROM http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/hoursworked/screen1d.asp)

Waiting for Work
Time which an employee is required to be at work or allowed to work for his or her employer is hours worked. A person hired to do nothing or to do nothing but wait for something to do or something to happen is still working. The Supreme Court has stated that employees subject to the FLSA must be paid for all the time spent in "physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer of his business."

Place of Work
Hours worked include all the time during which an employee is required or allowed to perform work for an employer, regardless of where the work is done, whether on the employer’s premises, at a designated work place, at home or at some other location.
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DOL.GOV, WAGE AND HOUR OFFICES:

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• LAW WITH REGARD TO UNPAID TRAINING, UNPAID WAIT TIME, DOWNTIME, ETC. - Alice
  • Yes - - lk
    • Production-paid employees have different laws and regulations. nm - BTDT
      • Would you care to show us where -- sm - TX MT
      • Not so. - lk
        • Flex time - Long time MT
          • Yes! - Alice
          • DARN TOOTIN'..... SM - TX MT
          • Flexing time - lk
      • No offense meant, but how do you know this? Again, I am not s/m - Vote 08

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Do MTSOs, nationals, usually pay for downtime for employees?  If so, what has been your experience - ever received downtime? your company's policy, i.e., pay for two days downtime?

Also, as an employee for a nat'l, if you have a set schedule, what do you do when very little work comes in, for example one dictation/hour?  At what point do you cut out?  I'm new to working for a national and this has happened a lot lately - I know, the holidays.  If there is little work, I usually only stay connected for two hours, let me sup. know, and call it a day. 

I swear, sometimes I hate this industry!!  Any other company, at least in my state, if there is no work, as an employee, you still get paid or after a certain period, you get unemployment...something!

First, this is not spam.  I am just a QA who found the below projects.  It is called BOINC, and the purpose is for home users to allow their CPU and memory to be utilized as a "supercomputer" for the purpose of medical and other research projects.  It runs on parameters you set in terms of when it can run, etc.  I have been using it for a week and it does not slow my system down at all.  Why not use that downtime for projects such as AIDS and cancer research?

Here are the links:

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta

You can also Google BOINC to find a list of projects.

Dear Dr. X

I am writing you in regards/regard  to John Smith 

I've been in this field for 20 some years and I have my own accounts by the physicians asking me personally from being on site and seeing how fast I type.

Unless you have connections, it's pretty hard to start your own business and offer up your services for cheaper than a national can.  Also, you would have to be flexible and have a call in system, do tapes, go digital, etc., etc. especially in this day and age.

I agree with this above poster; it's not so easy these days.

Does anyone else find it odd that the very select few of highly paid MTs, (making between 12 - 17 cpl)  are bold enough to write a post stating outright how much they make and how much they are worth.  But when questioned over and over about who these companies are that pay so well, no one volunteers even one name.

This bothers me for two reasons. 

1)  We're in a recession and many of your fellow MTs are struggling to feed their families and would benefit greatly from the same opportunity. 

2)  None of you are making these insane line rates and likely are just bored out of your mind because you are actually unemployed, which would explain why you have so much time to come here and fabricate things to post about.

No offense to anyone, but I find it incredibly frustrating to read your posts just to have my questions to you blatantly ignored.  If you aren't bold enough to answer, just have the common courtesy to say so.   I hope I'm dead wrong, but whether I am or not, the result is the same because none of you have the nads to speak up and give us some names!  If you aren't going to share information and make a difference, why bother?

I notice the first poster spelled clarity as "clearity".... A very easy third grade spelling word.  Are you coming to the job with experience of any kind or do they know ahead of time that they are training from scratch?  Are the editors paid well?

Because training an inexperienced person takes a lot of time and sometimes it's not successful.