Legal Question in Employment Law in Illinois

I work for a residential cable contractor who pays based on revenue of the types of jobs you do. We are paid 28% of the revenue we do for the week, which is then divided by the total hours worked for that week to give a hourly wage for the week. The company uses a point system in which the point total at the end of the day is used to determine what they call "billable hours." The point total multiplied by 5 and then divided by 60 equals the total amount of hours you are supposedly able to claim. At the end of the day the "point equation" may say you can only claim 5 hours although you may have worked 12 hours, which the company only wants to pay you the 5 hours. The company often makes workers sit in their trucks with no work or give you a job that is 3 hours later and just make you sit and then not want to pay you for the hours they made you sit. My question is that is it legal for the company to not pay us for the hours we actually worked, although they can make us take jobs at any point in time or make us wait in our trucks in a parking lot for hours until the scheduled time frame? Its almost everyday that we are not getting paid for multiple hours that we were technically on the clock.


Asked on 11/03/10, 8:22 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Betty Tsamis Tsamis Law Firm PC

Employers are required to pay employees for all hours worked. "Waiting time," is another issue. If you are free to do as you please with the waiting time and can leave, then it is not compensable. If, on the other hand, you are required to stay near the work site, the time is more likley to be compensable.

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Answered on 11/09/10, 8:46 am


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