Suddenly seeing your hours on the job rolled back or scaled down can be a jarring experience for working people who depend on steady hours to support themselves and their families. These kinds of moves often prompt the question: Is it legal?
The short answer is that it depends. Employers generally have the right to set their employees’ hours as they see fit. Reducing hours is not considered wage theft, so long as an employer still pays its employees for all of the time they work.
But slashing workers’ hours is unlawful if it is in retaliation for protected activity by employees or in a way that is discriminatory. In addition, some employers are bound by individual contracts or collective bargaining agreements that guarantee workers a certain number of hours per week.
At Justice Law Corporation, we help people in California and Washington ensure that they are fully paid and that their rights are protected on the job. Our attorneys have dedicated their careers to fighting back against employers who violate the law. We can help you understand your rights and take action.
Here is what you need to know if your hours have been cut.
When Your Employer Can Cut Your Hours
Companies and other employers may reduce workers’ hours for a wide range of reasons. The primary factor often is a desire to cut costs because of increased expenses, falling demand or pressure from owners or investors.
Our lawyers commonly see situations in which employers cut hours as a way to:
- Move the position from full-time to part-time
- Increase productivity and efficiency
- Reorganize by eliminating jobs or departments
- Avoid layoffs
Employers have a lot of latitude to make these kinds of business decisions. That is true even for employers that slash hours to try to entice some workers to quit.
California and Washington are “at will” employment states. That generally means that an employer can fire an employee for any reason (as long as it is not unlawful) or for no reason at all. It also means an employee can leave the job at any time, for any reason, or no reason.
At-will employees do not have a legal right to guaranteed hours of work. Employers can reduce or slash these workers’ hours at the drop of a hat and without explanation, if they so choose.
Unless, that is, the workers are covered by an employment contract or a collective bargaining agreement with a labor union. Individual contracts may specifically bar the employer from reducing hours beyond a certain point and/or require the employer to give the employee advance notice before changing hours. Collective bargaining agreements, which typically cover broad swaths of unionized workers, often include strong protections against reductions in hours.
Is it Illegal Retaliation?
Hours reductions cross into unlawful territory when they are intended to retaliate against workers for engaging in protected activity on the job.
Retaliation laws aim to prevent employers from silencing or penalizing employees who assert their legal rights or speak up for themselves. Protected activity includes:
- Making internal complaints about employment practices that the employee believes violate wage and hour, discrimination, workplace safety, labor or other laws.
- Filing similar complaints with state or federal agencies.
- Filing lawsuits over alleged workplace rights violations.
- Participating in an internal or external investigation or lawsuit, including by acting as a witness.
Take, for example, a group of workers who make an internal complaint accusing their manager of race-based discrimination and harassment. If the manager or the company turns around and slashes their hours for speaking up, that is unlawful retaliation.
You do not need to prove that the original complaint was meritorious – that the manager actually discriminated against and harassed the employees in the first place – in order to prove that you were retaliated against for making the complaint. As long as you reasonably believed you were acting in a protected way and the employer took a retaliatory action, you may be protected.
Is it Discrimination?
An employer’s decision to reduce hours may also be unlawful if it is discriminatory.
Federal and state laws in California and Washington ban discrimination based on a number of protected characteristics, such as:
- Race
- Gender
- Pregnancy
- Disability
- Age
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Gender identity
To be considered discrimination, an employee whose hours were cut must prove that race was a motivating factor in the decision, meaning the move was not simply due to a business slowdown or reorganization, or because the employee was performing poorly.
Not all employees in a particular group or department will have their hours cut in many situations. It is important to consider how the employer determined which workers would be impacted in these cases.
If coworkers outside your protected group kept their hours while yours were reduced, that comparison can be strong evidence. For example, if several pregnant employees lost hours but non-pregnant employees did not, that pattern matters.
The timing of the decision and other circumstances around it may also be evidence of discrimination. If a manager made biased remarks about an employee’s race, gender, pregnancy or disability, for instance, this can support a claim. That is true even if the comments were not directly tied to hours.
If an employee’s hours are cut shortly after the person announced a pregnancy, requested a disability accommodation, disclosed his or her sexual orientation, or converted to a new religion, that can also help show discriminatory motives.
Our California Wage and Hour Attorneys Can Help
If you believe that your employer is violating your rights on the job, whether it is by being underpaid or in other terms and conditions, you do not need to go it alone. A California wage and hour attorney at Justice Law Corporation can help you evaluate your claim and understand your rights and options.
Our office is conveniently located in Pasadena. Contact us at (818) 230-7502 to schedule a free consultation with a California wage and hour attorney.
