So my husband is an auto body repair man. He works commission, meaning every job he gets earns a certain amount of hours depending on how much needs to be done. In both instances now: Husband has done his end of the work, he sends it to paint, something was wrong with the paint, it had to be repainted. The painter was mad(?) about repainting things, so my husband’s boss took money out of my husband’s check to pay the painter with. Essentially his boss took away the hours that he had been given and had already completed the work for.
Sorry if that was confusing, I know I don’t write very well. My question is: Is this illegal and if so then what the hell do we even do?
Clarification: My husband is the tech that fixes dents, replaces parts, welds, sands, etc. THEN he sends it away to be painted. A completely different person does the painting. Their jobs and hours earned per vehicle are separate.
Is your husband a full employee or a contractor (1099)?
What do you mean by taking money out of his check? Is the painter indicating that your husband has done wrong and thus the owner is docking your husband’s pay?
Let me clarify. When a car comes in, it gets evaluated and someone called an estimator creates an estimate. This is a plan that lays out everything that needs to be done to the car, and how many hours it should take to complete it. Techs (at most shops) earn an hourly rate based on these hours, and not actually the amount of time they’re at work.
So if a job is written up for 10 hours, but the tech completes it in 7, they will still earn 10 “hours” of pay because they did all of the work.
In this case, my husband completed all the necessary work. But because the painter messed up and had to repaint something, the boss took “hours” away from my husband and gave them to the painter. Does that make more sense?
@Vick
So in your scenario you’re saying your husband completed the job in 7 but instead of getting 10 he got maybe 8 because the painter messed up and it took 2 more hours which went to the painter finishing the job.
@Vick
So, a job that should take 10 hours still pays 10 hours if you do it in 7. Fine. Wouldn’t you then assume it also still pays 10 if it takes you 12? Wouldn’t the same rules apply to the painter?
If the painter takes extra hours, why does the boss need to make that up to him by ‘transferring’ hours to him? I don’t get why that’s the boss’s problem? And it’s certainly not your husband’s. The only thing I can think of is the painter is the boss’s friend and the boss is stealing from your husband to help his friend. But it’s still stealing.
He’s supposed to make a base hourly wage plus a percentage based on repairs.
He should NOT be hustling to get hours on his timecard.
Your husband needs to find a new shop no matter how this turns out, and he needs to dispute the pay cut. Paint guy’s feelings/percentages don’t come into things, this is between your husband and his lousy scumbag boss.
As to the entire setup scheme, you didn’t post any location, so I can’t give too much advice, but he should definitely contact the department of labor about his boss’ creative accounting skills.
@MysteryMaverick
This is called flat-rate or flag-rate. It is very common in the auto repair industry. Each job pays a certain amount of time, if you don’t meet minimum wage the company will give you minimum wage. Very experienced workers can bill 20 hours in an 8 hour day, where less experienced workers may only bill 4 hours in a day. It’s a shitty pay system but perfectly legal. Docking his pay however is not legal.
OP, so people understand better, your husband does the body work (knocks out dents, bondo and sanding) and then sends it on to be painted by the painter, correct?
Jensen said:
OP, so people understand better, your husband does the body work (knocks out dents, bondo and sanding) and then sends it on to be painted by the painter, correct?
A lot of commenters are stating this is illegal and a wage & hour violation.
It’s more complicated than that.
Husband is not paid for the hours he works. He is paid an amount per job based on how long the job is supposed to take. E.g. Husband is going to perform 3 brake jobs and the shop charges 3 hours of labor to the customer and pays Husband for 9 hours of labor. If Husband can do all the work in 5 hours, he still gets paid for 9 hours and can then do other jobs to make even more.
In the scenario OP describes, he was paid a certain number of hours to do a paint job but it had to be repainted and the hours went to the person who finished the job because Husband’s work wasn’t good enough allegedly. This isn’t a Wage & Hour matter, and will depend on Husband’s contract and whether he is still making minimum wage on each job.
@Kellen
Let me clarify a little. My husband fixes the body of the car. Dents, parts, wires, welding, and all that jazz. Then he sends it to paint. In both cases, it was not the fault of my husband’s work. This most recent job went back to paint because the first paint job was chipping, and the first job went back because the color was off.
There’s most likely a federal violation here because very few companies that pay non-exempt employees flat rate calculate correctly for overtime.
If the pay plan says he gets x for doing y he needs to be paid for everything in the pay plan and at the week all performance pay is divided by the hours worked to set the base hourly rate and all hours over 40 paid at 1.5x that rate.
Of the pay plan says that the bonus for the whole job is split based on the joists of all people involved then the painter having to paint twice might mean that he spent more time and gets more of the split, but almost assuredly there’s something else here that they aren’t in compliance on.