- Is the system being added to other sites?
- Is this part of a move to centralize payroll?
- Are exempt employees also required to enter hours in Lawson?
- How does Lawson compare to your previous method of tracking hours?
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Is the system being added to other sites?
ReplyDeleteYes, it is being rolled out almost everywhere. It replaces the aging Cyborg payroll system.
Is this part of a move to centralize payroll?
Probably. I wouldn't be surprised if other finacial functions begin to get centralized. In many newspaper groups, Finance and Payroll have been regionalized for a long time.
Are exempt employees also required to enter hours in Lawson?
No. Exempt employees in the location where I am have never had to track their hours and that hasn't changed with the new payroll system. In fact they used to use the old system to track exempt PTO but the new system that is no longer tracked and managers have gone back to tracking that manually.
How does Lawson compare to your previous method of tracking hours?
For non-exempt in the location where I am it should be easier and more accurate. The new system has allowed us to move to digital time clocks whereas before time was tracked by employees filling in their hours on spreadsheet time cards every two weeks. Unless you swipe out and then go back to work it's kind of hard to "cheat" the system (or yourself).
If you aren't using time clocks, though, it's a LOT more data entry, since hours must be recorded for each day, rather than a total for the pay period as was used in Cyborg.
ReplyDeleteAt my location (Cherry Hill, surprise, surprise) exempt employees were told they MUST enter 7.5 hours for each day worked. I never work less than 9 hours a day, so this is kinda rubbing me, and quite a few others, the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteFor one, it's just not factual. And two, I'd like my actual hours worked tracked, so at the end of the year I can win the oh-so-coveted "Slave to the Courier-Post" trophy.
It just seems fishy, is all.
I'd like to see how they're going to manage printing one timesheet per employee per week given the state of our printers and photocopiers.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me most is not only do we have to falsify our time worked, but we also have to sign off on the dishonest hours each week. Won't this kick the legs out from under any future overworked/unpaid overtime complaints?
I'm at the Courier-Post and I can very easily see Joyce (M.E.) dismissing any issue by producing our own signatures on our own timesheets as concrete proof that we worked only 37.5 hours. Even though we all know it's a lie.
Hey Jericho fans!
ReplyDeleteFile this one under Jennings & Rall
Legendary Gannett H.R. boss Madelyn Jennings?
ReplyDeleteAre time sheets legal documents of some kind? If so, is intentionally falsifying hours at best unethical? (not to even get into the whole truth telling we're supposed to do)
ReplyDeleteSo could you tell your boss that you're going to only report factual hours worked? After all if you can't be truthful on a time sheet how can you be expected to be truthful in stories? Barring that I would keep a duplicate time sheet for my own records and document, document, document discussions with supes who tell me to falsify records.
Call me naive, but it's just a thought.
The time sheets have to be turned in on Friday, so you have to fill out your hours for Saturday and Sunday BEFORE you work them. Doesn't that inherently mean we'll be filling in made-up times? And there's only four slots on that thing. If you throw in a couple hours at home at the end of the day or over the weekend (or say an editor calls with questions on a Friday), that time sheet will be automatically full of baloney.
ReplyDeleteAnd I just loved the comment from the controller not to count a two-hour trip to the mall as work time. What exactly do these people think we do all day?
My supervisor told me to fill out the weekend stuff in advance and if any OT (haha) was worked we could adjust that later. My response was that I would add two additional hours for OT each for Saturday and Sunday and that we could adjust THAT later. She was not amused.
ReplyDeleteWhat does any of this have to do with Lawson. We put it in 7 months ago and nothing really changed from the old system
ReplyDeleteAt my paper, timesheets are due on the last day of the pay period; the first person in on Monday handles the data entry for any missed or off-site punches from the weekend.
ReplyDeleteStandard "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer applies, but I think that being forced to sign a timesheet that is not factual is illegal, specifically because labor is so regulated and because using false documents in commerce is fraudlulent (though maybe the employer-employee relationship is not commerce.
I try to keep overtime to a minimum, myself, but I don't underreport my hours either. The only exception is if I spent five minutes goofing off, I'll stay 5 minutes late at the end of a shift. If you underreport, you're doing the double disservice of not being paid and buttressing unrealistic expectations.
I know first hand that when I punched a clock (mag strip reader) at the Asbury Park Press my supervisor could go into the system and change whatever hours for whoever he wanted. He regularly entered hours for his business partner when he was a no show, and OT would be removed and comp time negotiated with individuals. Where the hell is wage & hour?
ReplyDeleteCan anyone explain what the codes mean on the payrool stub. No one can tell me at the Detroit media newspaper. Who knows if the deductions are correct.
ReplyDelete