Human Resource Blog

Discriminate among employees in a non exempt work group

Question:
Employer has a supervisor that permits non exempt employees to go to lunch beyond their thirty minutes non paid time under the policy, yet, other non exempt employees are being required to only take a 30 minutes lunch break. The supervisor is signing their their time cards that they are only taking a 30 minute lunch break when actually it is usually an hours. Is this against the law?

Thanks

This does not meet the definition of illegal discrimination, but the supervisor is falsifying payroll records and that is a violation of the law.

Different managers can treat their employees differently, even if the employees have the same job. This is called variation in management style. It is usually not a problem. Jane permits her employees to take a 60-minute lunch, while Marshas employees take only a 30-minute lunch. This might be illegal discrimination only if it has a disproportionate effect on members of a protected group based on race, color, sex, pregnancy, etc. Suppose everyone who reports to Jane is African-American while most employees who report to Marsha are Asian American. Marshas Asian American employees would have a good case for illegal discrimination in the workplace. However, if employees of all races,k sexes and ages are represented in both groups, this is not illegal discrimination.

However, it is unlawful. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA requires employers to keep accurate records of hours that employees work, for 3 years. In our example, Jane is falsifying timecards to show that her employees only took a 30-minute lunch, when in fact they took an hour or so. No employer should permit this type of time card fraud. Employers usually have the policy that anyone who falsifies company documents can be terminated immediately. By signing her employee timecards for times she knows they were not working, Jane is falsifying payroll records — and costing the employer a lot of money.

If Jane were giving her employees a one-hour lunch but requiring that they note it on their time cards, that would be lawful.