Can your employer change your pay date without your permission?
I’ve been at my current job for about 18 months now, and I’ve always gotten paid on Fridays. It’s bad enough that my employer won’t do direct deposit, which means it can take a day or more for my check to clear and funds to be available. Now, today he tells me the he’s going to start writing my checks on Mondays. (I don’t work Mondays so now I won’t be able to get my check until Tuesday, it won’t clear before Wednesday at the earliest, etc.) Can he do this?
I work for a church, and while he is the treasurer, he is not an elder, so I do have the option of going to the Council person in charge of personnel and bringing this up as an issue, but am trying to figure everything out before I do that.
Oh, and one more thing. When I was trying to explain the hardship that this was going to cause me this week in particular, his response was to say that he had just given me my Christmas bonus last week. Now, I used most of that money to buy gifts for family, and to get some things for myself that I’ve been putting off buying because my money was so tight. No matter what I used it for, I feel it was very inappropriate and unprofessional for him to make that comment and make me feel I had to explain how I had spent my bonus. Should he have even said that?
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8 Answers
Was it in your employment contract that you be paid on Friday? If not, as long as they aren’t refusing to pay you the agreed upon wage, and if it still happens with the same frequency, then they are well within their rights to do this.
Have you asked him why he does this and explained about the inconvenience to you?
Maybe you can ask him for your check a day or two early. It’s just one check out of many that he has to generate over the weekend.
I don’t have a contract. I work for a church that has four total employees. The reason he wants to write the check on Mondays is because he is in the office on Mondays. I understand that, but he could write it the Monday before and date it for the following Friday, and I wouldn’t be able to deposit it before Friday anyway. And I have tried to explain my situation to him, but it doesn’t seem to help.
All this could be solved with having direct deposit, but apparently he doesn’t want to set that up.
Well, they may be lots of things he’s not sharing with you figuring into his actions. I’m sorry that this is an inconvenience for you, I know things have been kind of rough recently, with your mother and all. I wish you better times in the New Year.
Yes, of course the employer can do that. Do you think that if IBM changes from a Friday to a Monday, they get permission from 120,000 employees? No way.
In a small place like yours, it would have been courteous for them to ask you, but not required.
Actually, I used the Google machine to look up some information, and, at least in Maryland, once your employer agrees to pay you on a certain day when you’re hired, they cannot change the pay day unless you agree to it.
At any rate, we worked it out, so I won’t have to go down that road. I didn’t want to have to, but my situation is precarious right now financially.
For all I know, maybe he looked up the law on the matter and figured he’d better backpedal.
@Lonelyheart807 Do you by any chance have a link to that law? That sounds very unusual to me, although sometimes MD has unusual laws.
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