My question involves employment and labor law for the state of: AZ
Good evening and thank you for your time in answering some questions I have for myself as fellow service techs.
Myself and the other service techs I work with company has been acquired by new owners and changes are coming and we are confused and looking for some answers. The original company as well as the new is based in California, but all of us techs are based out of our homes.
We all started out as salaried employees(although none of us should have been exempt-except our manager) now the new owners are changing us to hourly (except our manager). We all travel nationally as well as internationally to perform our duties so me working 80 hour weeks happens more often than not. So here is what the new owners want to do:
1. going hourly, they want to look back at our time cards to get a rough estimate of the normal hours we put in per week. Let's say I make 90k a yr and all the time I worked that should have been OT comes to 10k. They want to bump my salary down to 80k a year so that with the assumed 10k in OT would still keep me at my 90k salary. They assured us that we would be compensated the salary we make now and/or more (with OT) even after bumping down our salaries. We were told that if by chance I didnt make the 10k in OT that they would give OT to make sure I met my 90k salary. My question is: is this legal? How can this be binding as a employee? I guess I'm asking is how can I hold them to their word being an employee and not a contracted employee. (now dont get me wrong, I really like the new owners and do not believe that they would not pay us if we were short,but what recourse do we have if they decided not to pay me the 90k salary?
2. they are considering giving us a set work time schedule (example:8am-5pm) they are saying that there is no OT to be paid 1 hour before and after our schedule. As stated,my job puts me in different airports,different states/countires, etc... on a dialy/weekly basis. I live 2 hours from my airport. so lets say I have a flight at 7am, that means I have to be up and out of the house at 3am,arrive to airport at 5 am to be there in time for my 7 am flight. lets say I fly to Florida and dont get in till 7pm (Fla time) and I have 2 hour drive to my hotel, its now 9pm Fla time, which means I have been on the clock for 18 hrs-3 hr (time change) = 15 hrs. does the company not have to pay me that whole time? I know many companies has this in their policies to not pay 1 hr before and after shift, I assume this is because law says they dont pay to and from the place of office. The thing is my home is my office.
3. compensation/OT. they are telling us that we will be compensated OT based on the state laws of our home states, unless we go into Cal to work, then will be paid based on Cal. OT laws. So living in AZ I get OT compensation for any hours over 40 a week. So if I have a tech from Cal. come to AZ to work with me and lets say we work 14 hours in a day, I do not get OT, yet the Cal tech gets 1.5 times for anything over 8 hrs in the day and 2.0 times for anything over 12 hrs. With the company being based in Cal. do they have to base all OT compensation for all techs on Cal. laws,or can they go by each techs individual state laws?
I'm sorry this is so long, but all us techs have the same questions. We are a good bunch of guys who like our jobs and the new owners. We are not looking to get anything more than what is owed to us for the time we put into our jobs.
Thank you in advance for any ideas, suggestions, legal advice/answers that may be provided.

