Job not paying during tech issue.

[Rathji]

My wife is working from home and has been for 9 months now. Her contract specifies that she will be provided with the computer equipment etc needed to do the job, but that she must provide an Internet connection and phone line.

For the last 2 weeks, she has had a technical problem which is preventing her from working. Initially they blamed it on our ISP and network congestion, until we proved them wrong as the program works on any other computer in the house except the work supplied computer.

Before we proved this, they refused to pay her for her scheduled hours, since they felt it was our problem that we needed to resolve. Now that we have proven them wrong they still are refusing to pay her for the time, so she is not getting paid for 2 weeks, including the countless hours she spent troubleshooting the problem.

Am I out to lunch in thinking that she needs to be paid for this time? The company is based out of the US, if that matters.

[Locke]

Hell no. Bill for the time.

[CubicleGeek]

What company is this, so I never work for them?







Yes, bill for it, if they are issuing equipment they are accountable for the equipment working.

[Addick]

If all else fails, bill them for the IT Consultancy work.

[Sliver]

Billing them is one thing. Having them pay is another. Probably best if you come to an agreement on payment before you bill them, though.

Being a consultant comes with pros and cons. I can see why your wife would want to be paid; however, I can see why they wouldn't want to pay for nothing. We probably need a few more details before we'd be able to truly help, but obviously those can be tricky to provide on a public forum.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Billing them is one thing. Having them pay is another. Probably best if you come to an agreement on payment before you bill them, though.

Being a consultant comes with pros and cons. I can see why your wife would want to be paid; however, I can see why they wouldn't want to pay for nothing. We probably need a few more details before we'd be able to truly help, but obviously those can be tricky to provide on a public forum.

She is a regular hourly employee, not a contractor. They are denying her hours she is entering on her time sheet until they determine the cause. If it has something to do with our internet or phone line, she won't be paid. For example, she gets up at 5am, logs into her work computer and things are broken and she gets paid nothing.

They won't even pay her for the time she spent troubleshooting the issue.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Rathji

She is a regular hourly employee, not a contractor. They are denying her hours she is entering on her time sheet until they determine the cause. If it has something to do with our internet or phone line, she won't be paid. For example, she gets up at 5am, logs into her work computer and things are broken and she gets paid nothing.

They won't even pay her for the time she spent troubleshooting the issue.

Gotcha. She should likely be paid for troubleshooting. Is she trying to get paid for hours in addition to the troubleshooting even though she wasn't actually working?

[Regulator75]

Originally Posted by fotze

I always thought jobs like this were fictional. You can actually 'work from home'?

Web cam girls?

[taco.vidal]

Whats the contract say?

Take the work from home aspect out of it. Assume she worked at the employers office and after a few days they couldn't figure out the problem and sent her home. As an hourly employee Im not sure the employer has an obligation to pay you. As a salaried employee, then they might have to pay. If its a small employer and they're having serious tech problems and not able to provide service to their clients then they might not be able to make payroll.

Originally Posted by Rathji

My wife is working from home and has been for 9 months now. Her contract specifies that she will be provided with the computer equipment etc needed to do the job, but that she must provide an Internet connection and phone line.

For the last 2 weeks, she has had a technical problem which is preventing her from working. Initially they blamed it on our ISP and network congestion, until we proved them wrong as the program works on any other computer in the house except the work supplied computer.

Before we proved this, they refused to pay her for her scheduled hours, since they felt it was our problem that we needed to resolve. Now that we have proven them wrong they still are refusing to pay her for the time, so she is not getting paid for 2 weeks, including the countless hours she spent troubleshooting the problem.

Am I out to lunch in thinking that she needs to be paid for this time? The company is based out of the US, if that matters.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Whats the contract say?

Take the work from home aspect out of it. Assume she worked at the employers office and after a few days they couldn't figure out the problem and sent her home. As an hourly employee Im not sure the employer has an obligation to pay you. As a salaried employee, then they might have to pay. If its a small employer and they're having serious tech problems and not able to provide service to their clients then they might not be able to make payroll.

In that case, the employer would need to pay you for coming in and the time until they decided to send you home. Depending on your employer, you might be even be entitled to a minimum amount of pay for coming in, for example if they bring you in for 15 minutes and send you home, if they just paid you that 15 minutes, that is pretty crappy. Especially if they tell you to keep coming in every day while it is broken, and sending you home right away after.

Think of it like this, say your job depends entirely upon you having a special stapler. One day your stapler jams up, and you can't unjam it. You spend hours trying to fix it, but since you only get paid while you are actually putting staples in, you don't get paid anything for what you are doing. To top it all off, you can't get the company to send you a new stapler or even be bothered to get someone on the phone to help you unjam it, unless you come into work 7 hours earlier than normal without getting paid. Then after a couple weeks of this, you find out that you are hardly getting a pay check at all, because they rejected your application for paid time off that is due to a tech issue.

[Street Pharmacist]

Employment standards in Alberta says minimum 3 hrs for being called in I believe

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Gotcha. She should likely be paid for troubleshooting. Is she trying to get paid for hours in addition to the troubleshooting even though she wasn't actually working?

Either would be nice.

[Titan]

I hope she has spent her time not working looking for a new job with a less craptastic employer.

[FlamingLonghorn]

Originally Posted by Rathji

For the last 2 weeks, she has had a technical problem which is preventing her from working. Initially they blamed it on our ISP and network congestion, until we proved them wrong as the program works on any other computer in the house except the work supplied computer.

Can she do the job on another computer until the issue gets resolved?

[ken0042]

Here's the other question- how good is this job otherwise? What I'm thinking is that she could make demands, and get paid those hours. (which I think she is entitled to.) However if that means she may be let go for some other "reason" down the road; is it worth the fight? I'm thinking the next time they need to cut a corner, they look to her first.

[Superflyer]

Just another question. If the program works on other comptuers can she just use it on one of them or is there something else on the work laptop that she needs along with it? If she can use it on the other computers has she been?
If she is using the other computer with the program then how can they say she is not working? If she cannot use the program on another comptuer then she is essentially dead in the water and that becomes a grey area on if she should be paid or not.
As for the troubleshooting part, I would say if she is working with the helpdesk\IT then it should be billable, if she is doing it on her own then it is hard to prove what she is doing for troubleshooting and thus may not be able to bill for it.

Just my thoughts.

[KevanGuy]

In my experience there isn't a whole lot of black and white when it comes to labour laws. Call Employment Standards and ask them 1‑877‑427‑3731.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Employment standards in Alberta says minimum 3 hrs for being called in I believe

I assume it's different if you don't actually show up anywhere. The spirit of the three-hour rule is more to compensate somebody for the time, effort and expense in showing up somewhere only to be turned away. I think it's different if you walk from one bedroom in your house to the other bedroom across the hall.

Originally Posted by Rathji

Either would be nice.

What would be nice and what is fair are two different things.

If she isn't being productive for two weeks (in a revenue-generating sense), then it can be difficult for her employer to pay her. I pay my hourly employees for the hours they work. I make money from their time. If they aren't here, I don't make money, so what am I supposed to pay them with?

Paying employees an hourly rate is flexible for them and for the employer. If I want them to work more, they know I'll pay them more (versus a salaried employee that isn't entitled to overtime pay). If they want to work less, they get paid less. If something that happens out of both of our control and they can't work, it's sort of left up to me what I want to do. I can sustain paying them for a little while (like in the floods when I sent everybody home with pay), but as a small business I have to look at the long-term financial health of the business for the good of me and all the other employees. I can't be expected to pay somebody for two weeks of work where they accomplished nothing because of a technical issue*.

*The nature of the job and of the technical issue could sway me one way or another on this (to pay or not to pay), but frankly we still don't have enough information from Rathji to make the call. It reads to me like we're getting just enough information to be sympathetic to his side.

As for paying her for the technical troubleshooting, I still think that is fair, provided the hours are modest and she is actually qualified to troubleshoot the problems. In her shoes, I just can't see myself letting this go on for weeks and still expecting pay.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I assume it's different if you don't actually show up anywhere. The spirit of the three-hour rule is more to compensate somebody for the time, effort and expense in showing up somewhere only to be turned away. I think it's different if you walk from one bedroom in your house to the other bedroom across the hall.

It is different, but child care still needs to be arranged, you still need to get up at 5am, etc etc. Would your babysitter be happy if every day you called her to come and then after 20 minutes sent her home?

It would be totally different if they said, hey don't come into work, we will call you when the stuff is fixed so you can work.


What information am I leaving out that is relevant?

She works as phone support for a large company in Canada, but does this work as an employee of a US based company. She can't get her phone to connect, so she can't work. She has been working on resolving the issue with tech support for 2 weeks.

Due to the nature of her job, she only gets paid while she is on the phone, or is ready to take calls. So to get paid for this time that she works in troubleshooting etc, she needs to file a request for this pay separately. We find out a couple days ago, when she got paid, that all these requests have been denied. She is able to work now, by providing another computer to run her phone. Of course, the company still insists the tech problem is on our end, but they can't tell us what it is or how to fix it. They expect her to be there to troubleshoot, but are not paying her for that time.

I am not looking for sympathy, I just need to know what the options are when dealing with a US company while in Alberta. I need to know what we should be expecting as which hours we should be expecting as far as what the labour laws go.

Thank you everyone for your input. We are considering all options, including eating the loss to maintain employment. The job isn't all that great in terms of pay, but working from home has its benefits.

[Superflyer]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I am not looking for sympathy, I just need to know what the options are when dealing with a US company while in Alberta. I need to know what we should be expecting as which hours we should be expecting as far as what the labour laws go.

As an aside question on this, talking about labour laws and such. For a Canadian working for a US company like this, which labour laws would come into effect. I am assuming Albertas would as she is based in Alberta but I am not positive on that. Can someone answer that?