Snow and Ice schedule work weeks
Wage and Hour mistakes are becoming more of an enforcement priority at the US Department of Labor (DOL). In January of 2019, the DOL increased the penalty for a single classification error to more than $2000 per offense.* How are the State of MN, MMB-HR, MnDOT staying in compliance with wage law, and are all necessary Federally-required records being maintained in compliance? Wage and hour records can require each employee track and blend several time tracking systems. Good luck making an accurate enterprise of that, but somehow it is getting done. Barely.
MnDOT annually revises special snow and ice policies, as in AFSCME's statewide agreement the employer, at state and local levels, may issue necessary seasonal policies to abridge the AFSCME State contract -- because there is each winter over $100M of road maintenance business reasons to do so. If these annual reviews of policy include AFSCME input, and that is a big if, cooperation between labor and management keeps members safe from harsh and punative disciplinary excesses. The possibility of fines makes for high stakes - risk of "fines" usually ends up meaning employees risk time-off for not answering storm callouts that no one knows when will happen.
“Workweeks” need to be consistent from week to week — it cannot be an arbitrary or variable 7-day period, it will never be “Monday through Friday”. Winter's all-hands-on-deck snowstorm weather events in reality are not consistent, are wildly variable. For prudent, proactive risk reduction, somehow a complexly varying scheduling plan makes for full compliance regardless of how much compliance gets achieved during an unpredictable megastorm winter event.
AFSCME contract grids label wages as "salaries"
Are AFSCME state employees classifications unambiguously being clarified`in every reference, in the state contract? Published pay grids for the Statewide agreement, in grid titles and notation, make no mention of wages but refer to "hourly and monthly salaries". When referring to these oddly mislabelled grids, can someone might get the mistaken impression they have eligibility for meal and lodging per diem, as if salaried and exempt, but also are just as convinced they should have eligibility to receive x1.5 OT pay, as if waged and non-exempt. At $2000 per DOL offence, not likely to happen! It's one or the other - or a law is broken. There are 3 tests that must be met for an employee to qualify as “exempt”:
1. They must be paid a fixed salary each pay period,
2. They must be paid a minimum salary level (currently set at $684/week or $35,568/year),
3. They must meet the job duty requirements for being classified as an Administrator, Executive, or Professional (other exceptions exist, but these are the most common exemptions affecting CEDR Members and healthcare professionals).
* CEDR HR Solutions
i9 forms: Proving you have any "right to work" at all, anywhere, in the United States
Below in the PDF's is something else where a lapse in Federal record-keeping requirements might bring fines. New hires (or basically anyone at at any point?) can be challenged to prove their resident citizenship status by being asked to submit a USCIS-I9 form (along with either passport or DL and SS or DL and Birth Certificate) to comply with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The I9 form expires every 10 years. By policy MnDOT does not normally offer positions to non-nativist guest workers who require visas.
At the State Employee Self-service Center, employees can quickly find leave balances, but verifying I9 status is not so easy, if for some reason records had not been maintained properly.
houly_salary.pdf