A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Production employees (not IC's): How much - overtime do you fail to report?

Posted: Jul 13, 2010

The compensation structure and "minimum" hourly or daily production expectations often encourage people in our industry to work unreported hours in order to meet minimums. You have a day when you get a rash of the account's most trying dictators, for instance, and at the end of 8 hours you realize that you haven't met minimums...so you work another hour, while reporting only the 8 hours.

Transcription companies are, of course, aware of this dirty little secret and do nothing about it because it suits them just fine - just as long as the work gets done. However, it comes dangerously close to running a "sweat shop" because of the compensation structure and the minimum requirements - and it's of interest to the Department of Labor when a company sets things up in such a way that such conditions exist.

I bet I easily put in 10 hours a week. - sm

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But with the ordered flexing, the MTSOs make it very difficult to keep track of that exactly. You type a full hour. Next hour you only have 2 reports despite hitting the next button for the full hour (you're there for an hour but you get paid for, what, 60 lines?). The hour after that you may only get one. Come back two hours later, type a couple, off an on all day. In reality, you've been chained to your desk all day. You've been at your desk for the eight hours of your scheduled shift, but you've got maybe 600 lines to show for it. Sure, you can stop there because you've done your eight hours, but if you do the MTSOs will either take your benefits from you or just straight up fire you for not producing your line count. So you spend a lot more time trying to get that increasingly difficult line count. While not exactly a sweat shop (because they've always got work to do), in essence they're locking the doors until you get your lines, and you have no choice but to spend the 10-12-14 hours it takes to get them.

Probably at least 10 if not more. sm - RoadRunnerMT

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MTSO knows about it. You can easily see when someone is logged on and logged off the system. As long as you don't report more than 40 hours, you are good to go. It's all about paperwork and covering the trail of proof. But you can believe they will check out when you are signing on and off to see if you are working your shift or not!

i don't even count anymore... - Alice

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it's too depressing to think about all the extra time i spend at this desk, yet my paycheck is less than it has ever been...and, as of 10:15 on Thursday, I'm out of work again.

and then we need help E-mails - tired MT

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And there are the companies who send out E-mails because the work is getting out of TAT, we need help, etc, etc, etc. They do this on the weekends, at night, during the day, whatever, BUT, conveniently, no mention of being paid overtime is ever made, and if you ask about it, E-mail is ignored, which is why I just make my line requirement which takes usually 45-50 hours a week. I used to give extra BUT already give too much with the extra hours above, just not worth giving more and not being paid either. I don't even feel guilty anymore for not helping out. I just delete the E-mails, but I read them because a little part of me hopes one will say you will be paid overtime, but I'm just dreaming. LOL

About 12-14 hours per week, currently. Company is - fully aware of it, too. Ticks me off. nm

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.

Its not just close to a sweatshop, it IS a sweatshop. - nm - Rocky Raccoon

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I can only work exactly 40 hours/week and not 1 minute over... - former IC

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I work 6 days a week, 6 hours a day, so 36 hours a week. But "mandatory 1 hour overtime" only gives me 4 "extra" hours on my time card b/c as of Friday at midnight, I cannot work (or claim) more than 40 b/c we will not get paid OT unless we are told so beforehand. I do not put in anymore hours then that. I also do not come close to minimum line count even with working 40 hours exactly, so until I get in trouble for that, I ain't sayin' a word. BTW, I did send an email asking what happens if I do not consistently make line count and I never got a reply. Oh well...

That's kind of the point of the question. They say no more than 40 - but need to work more to make lines. nm

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x

I agree...sm - former IC

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How can any MT "not claim" OT or any hours over 40 or whatever when you have to sign in/out of the platform to work. I do claim 40 hours b/c that is what I work. I could not work 41, 45, 50 or more hours and only put 40 on my time card when the company could check and see that I was in deed working more than 40 but didn't claim it. BTW, I would have to work way more than 40 to make line count, I'm about 2000+ lines short on the requirement.

They would know I "lied" about my actual hours worked when my time card differed from my actual log in/out times and how many lines I really did, so why work more than I have to when I won't be paid OT line rate anyway?

Just a thought...

Like they'd ever actually count. You just say logged in/not working. Which is - true some of the time anyway.

[ In Reply To ..]
If they actually counted our shift as the 8 hours it is supposed to be, which they should by law be doing since they expect us to be working and we are sitting there hitting refresh-refresh-refresh-refresh-refresh, any minute we spend flexing to make lines should be overtime.

But you just can't do it. If you claim the overtime, you get fired for taking unauthorized overtime. If you confine yourself to eight hours and don't make your line count, you not only starve because you've got about one half of your income, but adding insult to injury, you get fired for not meeting production quotas.

So the dirty little not-so-secret secret is that a whoooooole lot of people are working 50-60 hours a week without getting paid a cent of OT just to keep their jobs.

Ooohhh, I'm a DUH, I get what ur saying now! - former IC

[ In Reply To ..]
I hope I didn't ruin the "secret".

Thanks for 'splainin it to me cuz I didnt get it before.

No wonder MTs are p@ssed about OT. YIKES!

My account is rarely out of work too, I just have short-a@@ reports that have very few line counts.

Perhaps - but....

[ In Reply To ..]
You're presuming that someone reconciles the platform log-in times with the time cards, and you'd certainly think that this would be the case, but when you think about it you'll realize that the company has some very "good" reasons not to do so.

First, it is to the company's advantage to remain "officially ignorant" of the time that people are actually working.

Second, although certainly not a herculean task, it wouldn't necessarily be an easy task to reconcile all of the sign-on/sign-off times for each and every employee with their reported payroll hours. There would be hundreds or thousands of data points to deal with during a typical pay period even if the company only has a very modest workforce.

However, your post does raise an interesting point. Unlike a few years ago, every transcription platform today IS capable of capturing a remote MT's work activities - in some cases, even whether she is actually working or not while signed on.

That being the case, how come we don't just pay MTs by the hour, exactly as we did when they worked on site at the hospital? Pay-by-line is no longer necessary, and an hourly wage is much more typical of how American workers are paid. As such, it would make both the IRS and the DOL much happier. It would also simplify administration of benefits like insurance, etc. MUCH easier.

Today, there is everything necessary to make it possible to simply pay people an hourly wage even though they work remotely. And, there is everything necessary to deal with "problem employees" if they try to scam the system (i.e. watch "As the Stomach Turns" while logged onto the system and supposedly "working"). If you've got such an employee, their production numbers won't jive with their hours, and then you simply deal with the situation individually - just as you would if they worked in your office and you noticed them spending too much time at the water cooler.

So why DON'T transcription companies pay by the hour? Line counts are no longer the only means available to "measure" the MT's work effort. We can track their time as closely as if they were working at the desk beside us and punching a time clock...so why don't we pay them hourly? And we could still give production bonuses if we wished to reward "extra effort" - so that's not the reason. ("We want our good MTs to be able to earn more..." gag)

I have a pretty good idea that you can find at least some of the answer in two phenomena:

1. Paying you by production shifts a significant portion of the costs associated with production difficulties (e.g., system outages, difficult dictators, etc.) to you.

2. Paying you by production shifts many of the business costs related to the variability of work volumes to you. No work, no pay.

These costs of doing business properly belong to the company, not to the MT. However, by paying you by the line instead of the hour, the company gets to shift them to you.

To see what I mean, answer these two questions:
1. What does it cost the company in terms of payroll when you are out of work? Answer: Nothing.

2. What does it cost you in terms of payroll when you are out of work? Answer: Whatever you would have produced if not out of work.

Now - if all of us were working in the office and we ran out of work, they couldn't exactly stop paying our hourly wage, could they? This is what I am illustrating. On a production basis, YOU bear the costs of lack of work, difficult work, etc.

Oh - and that also means that there is NO PENALTY to the company that HIRES TOO MANY PEOPLE JUST TO HAVE "EXTRA CAPACITY", either. It costs them no more to have six people out of work than it does to have one person out of work. Six times $zero is still $zero.

But there's also a THIRD BENEFIT to the MTSO, which can be found in the amazingly complex "compensation matrix" that many of them have come up with. These are so complicated in some cases that it is virtually impossible for an MT to know what she has earned, or to verify that she has been paid correctly. Many of you know exactly what I mean:

If you are a tier 1 MT who does between 600 and 800 lines per day during the second phase of the full moon while the bat flies out of the belfry, you earn 0.0806620504 per line - providing the Chicago White Sox win by two runs or more and the train from London to Edinborough comes in on time. (If not, you earn nothing.) This, of course, presumes that you were working on your primary account; otherwise, you earn 0.0806620505 per line.

...and if at least 36.20% of your work was performed on 2nd shift (which is measured by Istanbul time), then you will be given a shift differential of one Coca-Cola bottlecap and six shoelaces in your choice of brown or white.

Besides making it impossible for people to know what they are making or what they should have been paid, these complex schemes accomplish something else that is VERY IMPORTANT for the MTSO. They make it impossible for you to compare job opportunities from one company to the next in terms of compensation.

Hourly pay would rob the MTSO's of these blessings. May all praise and honor be given to our Lord, Dictaphone, and His minions.

On reflecting on these hard, cold observations, some might be tempted to use terms like "unconscionable" or "reprehensible". Some might think that the company is taking extremely unfair advantage of the MT.

Well, you can count me among the "some" right along with you.

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