Seeing this post made me flash back to how often wage theft happened to me during holidays as a teenager.
4th of July, New Year's... Didn't even know about time and a half.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Had a (roughly) similar experience when I used to work for a construction company. Once, a job was behind schedule, and they asked us to voluntarily work on a Saturday. Virtually everyone did, because working on a weekend got you time and a half pay.
Instead of a full day, though, they sent us home at lunchtime. Nobody was expecting that. One guy summed it up pretty well: “I got up at 6 AM on a Saturday to make less than I did yesterday? This is bullshit!”
After that, whenever our bosses asked if we’d come in on a Saturday, someone asked if it would be a full day or a half day. When our bosses said “I don’t know” (which is what they said every time) nobody came in.
They got away with exploiting us once, but completely screwed themselves in the long term. I was (and still am) very proud of my coworkers for continuing to hold management accountable for their decisions.
Can you add some context? I don't understand. You worked half a day, are they not paying you time and a half for that half day?
If OP and coworkers normally start at 8 and finish at 5 (9 hours of work), if you assume they ordinarily make $10/hr (for the sake of an example), they all made $90 for their work on Friday. If they came in at 8am on Saturday to be sent home at 12pm, then even at time and a half, they only made $60 for their work on Saturday
Completely legal, sure, but I wouldn't want to drag my arse out of bed at 6am on Saturday to earn less than I do on a regular work day
I guess it's a matter of perspective? I personally would be happy to work half a day and get paid at a better rate than I normally would even if it was for a short period. Assuming I wasn't spending an hour commuting to work or something.
Edit: Who's the grumpy ass who's downvoting me for sharing a personal opinion? I'm not even judging OP or anything.
in construction you're always at least an hour away.
it's about the trust. mgmt said, "you want to work tomorrow?" implying it as a full day. they then turned around and doubled down and kept lying to them.
no, if your employer does this, they have zero investment in their own workforce and will have zero problems firing the lot when it's convenient.
When its your choice, yeah - it's a matter of personal preference. But when it's like "hey surprise, you're not getting the work you thought you were getting" - that's not so cool.
Not a matter of perspective. If someone offers me a day but only gives me half a day, they fucked me over. It's not just the money, but also the ability to do other things that afternoon, because they were dishonest.
People would need to turn down or cancel other work opportunities that day, or at the very least miss other scheduled plans or errands... they should have been upfront about it.
Yeah, I can understand that perspective. My problem was that it was both dishonest and insulting. And yes, the commute was about an hour. I would have rather slept late. That’s what weekends are supposed to be for.
Yes, they did pay us time and a half for the short time we were there, but that isn’t really the point.
Baku, who replied to you directly, summed it up perfectly.
I’m also going to quote a reply you may not have seen, from GreenKnight23. It’s excellent as well.