Full time employees

[Doug406]

Lazer or others, I am in the position this year of needing a full time employee. My question is this, how do you pay them?? I pay as follows, Sarting pay $8.50 an hour for first 30 and then up to $9 and after 60 $10. Second year returners $11 all season. We run four trucks and two blowers in the winter, but only two of the trucks and snowblowers are mine, therefore I pay $40 per sub hour and $21 per blower hour. <br> What type of pay structure could I establish with a full year guy. I like the security of a full timer, and we could do maintenance in the winter also, but what else could we be doing?

[paul]

By law in our state 40 hours is straight time any thing over that is time and half. Our union calles that any day the man works over 8 hrs. then time and one half. all saturday in all time and one half, Sunday (god forbid double time)<p>----------<br>paul<br>

[Lazer]

Doug,<br>The law requires you to pay 1.5x the hourly rate for over 40 hours.<p>40.00/hour is a great deal if your sub is reliable.<p>Our guys get paid for 40 hours in the winter, whether they work or not.

[kermit]

Wow, guess wr're lucky here in Canada, home of the dreaded socialism. We are considered agriculture and don't pay any overtime. We are not obliged to pay for legal holidays either but I usually give the crews the choice of working or not.

[MWHC]

Do any of you that have year round employees use a salary instead of an hourly wage? This will eliminate the overtime problem. IMO its not worth having the employees out there if you are paying double time.

[paul]

Sometimes you have to do it 2 years ago we where completing a park district golf course club house, with spring rains and construction delays we ended up spending 2 sundays and the night before opening completing the brick pavers. One reason that I have a generator and 500 watt work lights in all my enclosed trailers.<p>----------<br>paul<p>

[GroundKprs]

If you are just starting out, with only one employee, you are exempted from the federal wage and hour regulations, and also same regs in some states. Federal wage and hour regs apply only to business with two or more employees or to any business with annual gross of $1 mil & above.<p>So if you have just one employee, and you two agree, you do not have to pay any overtime for over 40 hours from federal viewpoint. Got my tail reamed for saying this in a business class, and the instructor apologized to me next week. The key is to make sure on your state regs.<p>----------<br>Jim<br>North central Indiana<br>

[cutntrim]

Hey Kermit,<p>As far as I am aware we DO have to pay overtime and extra on holidays in Ontario. However, if your employee(s) agree to working extra hours for their normal hourly rate then it's o.k.<p>Haven't heard about that &quot;agricultural&quot; loophole before.<p>----------<br>Dave in S.Ontario<br>

[MJM Landscaping Inc]

Ive had 2 foreman on salary and the problem is that they both quit towards the end of the season because they didnt feel they were getting paid enough for the hours($500.00 week, full health insurance, co vehicle, and 1 week paid vac.) Unfortuanately what i couldnt get through to them was the fact that they were being paid year round and for 2-3 months we only work a few hours on equipment, and fall is only about 30 hrs a week. This year we decided to go hourly.<br>PS: You better see about your local laws, i remember someone tell me that you still have to pay overtime even for salary employee's. I really dont know though.<br>mark

[Lazer]

I might be a state law, but I thought it was federal: A salaried employee does not need to be paid overtime, but the need to be in a managerial position and oversee a minimum of 2 hourly employees to be salary.<p>Enforcement of this law?

[John26Hooks]

I work for a percentage of our company as a full time employee. That way my pay increases with performance and finding accounts. I make the bids, therefore, I know what the accounts are worth to my check. I enjoy working for a percentage and being involved with all accounts. Find a percentage that you can deal with. An employee, such as myself, will find it beneficial to have knowledge of what I'm getting paid weekly by the accounts. It also lets me know which accounts need to be dropped so we can increase our rate of pay.

[ashlandscaping]

Lazer is right about the salary part as long as they are in a manager type job you dont have to pay for o.t. As far as enforcement all it takes is one person to read the labor law sheet and they know all they need to know including what # to call to make a compliant. As far as if they agree to working for normal when it should be o.t. I would be carefull I seen a couple times where the guy said no problem then got pissed off down the line made a complaint and the state went in and forced payment of o.t. plus interset so be carefull on doing that part.