Note that this refers to the Florida Supreme Court and Florida - Department of Labor. Other states...sm Posted: Jul 4th, 2017 - 2:06 pm In Reply to: To TTS'ers all of you who aren't getting paid - for this downtime...
...have different rules for what they call "wait time", "standby time", etc. In some states, for instance, there is the provision that in order to be eligible for "standby" wages you must be required to remain at your place of employment (in our case, home) while waiting for work, etc. If you're free to leave, go shopping or do other things, you're not considered to be "personally encumbered" by being on standby, and not entitled to be paid for that time.
More to the point, TTS has not actually "required" anyone to do anything, per se - very careful not to, in fact. Which is the argument they would make if push came to shove.
And, as a practical matter any such claim would undoubtedly entail administrative hearings, etc., TTS would hire lawyers you can't afford, and it could take years to work its way through the bureaucracy even if you prevailed.
I wish I could be more encouraging, but the fact is that we live in a strange world in which we're supposed to be scheduled employees (whether full- or part-time) but we're not paid by the hour and not paid for even one second that our hands are not on the keyboard...
It's an abominable situation that should be illegal because the inequity that falls on us is a clear violation of the spirit of labor law, which presumes a fair two-way exchange between employer and employee. We CERTAINLY do not have that!
The only REAL and LASTING solution to the many inequities we deal with is organizing, and you've no idea what a non-organizer I am, but there HAVE BEEN and STILL ARE industries where the only hope employees have is to organize.
I'm always forced to close posts like this with the observation that we get treated exactly as we allow ourselves to be treated. It's no good complaining that there are predatory companies that will eat us up when we go around making noises like rabbits.
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