nytimes.com: "Rosann Wilks, who was an assistant manager at a Pep Boys in Nashville, said she was fired in 2001 after refusing to delete time. She said her district manager told her, 'Under no circumstances at all is overtime allowed, and if so, then you need to shave time.'
At first, she bowed to orders and erased hours. Some employees began asking questions, she said, but they refused to confront management. 'They took it lying down,' she said. 'They didn't want to lose their job. Jobs are hard to find.'
When she started feeling guilty and confronted her district manager, she said, 'It all came to a boil. He fired me.'
Bill Furtkevic, Pep Boys' spokesman, said his company did not tolerate deleting time.
'Pep Boys' policy dictates, and record demonstrates, that any store manager found to have shaved any amount of employee time be terminated,' he said. He added that the company's investigation 'revealed no more than 21 instances over the past five years where time shaving' had occurred.
More than a dozen former Wal-Mart employees said time records were altered in numerous ways. Some said that when they clocked more than 40 hours a week, managers transferred extra hours to the following week, to avoid paying overtime. Federal law bars moving hours from one week to another.
Wal-Mart executives acknowledged that one common practice, the 'one-minute clock-out,' had cheated employees for years. It involved workers who clocked out for lunch and forgot to clock back in before finishing the day. In such situations, many managers altered records to show such workers clocking out for the day one minute after their lunch breaks began "
At first, she bowed to orders and erased hours. Some employees began asking questions, she said, but they refused to confront management. 'They took it lying down,' she said. 'They didn't want to lose their job. Jobs are hard to find.'
When she started feeling guilty and confronted her district manager, she said, 'It all came to a boil. He fired me.'
Bill Furtkevic, Pep Boys' spokesman, said his company did not tolerate deleting time.
'Pep Boys' policy dictates, and record demonstrates, that any store manager found to have shaved any amount of employee time be terminated,' he said. He added that the company's investigation 'revealed no more than 21 instances over the past five years where time shaving' had occurred.
More than a dozen former Wal-Mart employees said time records were altered in numerous ways. Some said that when they clocked more than 40 hours a week, managers transferred extra hours to the following week, to avoid paying overtime. Federal law bars moving hours from one week to another.
Wal-Mart executives acknowledged that one common practice, the 'one-minute clock-out,' had cheated employees for years. It involved workers who clocked out for lunch and forgot to clock back in before finishing the day. In such situations, many managers altered records to show such workers clocking out for the day one minute after their lunch breaks began "
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