{"id":12212,"date":"2018-05-22T02:16:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T02:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12212"},"modified":"2018-05-23T02:22:40","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T02:22:40","slug":"cheating-workers-out-of-wages-is-easier-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/cheating-workers-out-of-wages-is-easier-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheating workers out of wages is easier than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth C. Tippett<\/a>, University of Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Jara Neal Willis, a nurse at a hospital in Texas, usually clocked in a few minutes before the start of her shift and stayed late whenever her patients needed help. Her lunch breaks were often cut short by requests from doctors, patients or their families.<\/p>\n

Willis and her colleagues, however, claimed they were not paid for those extra few minutes worked before and after their shifts. Or for working during lunch breaks.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t because of mischievous gremlins falsifying their time cards in a backroom, but settings in the software the hospital used to track comings and goings. Two features alone, \u201crounding\u201d and \u201cautomatic break deductions,\u201d could result in the loss of up to 44 minutes a day \u2013 or US$1,382 a year at the federal minimum wage.<\/p>\n

Timekeeping software was the focus of a study<\/a> I co-authored last year documenting<\/a> how it could be used to facilitate wage theft. <\/p>\n

But it left a lingering question: Did companies actually use these features to shortchange workers? Based on my review of hundreds of lawsuits like Willis\u2019, the answer is yes \u2013 and it\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

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