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#Post#: 48127--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Jayhawk Date: March 2, 2020, 12:10 pm
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They should definitely be paying your salary while you are at a
conference, especially if they're paying for it!
#Post#: 48128--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Jem Date: March 2, 2020, 12:27 pm
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[quote author=Jayhawk link=topic=1645.msg48127#msg48127
date=1583172609]
They should definitely be paying your salary while you are at a
conference, especially if they're paying for it!
[/quote]
The title is misleading. I agree that if the OP were salaried,
she should keep getting her salary while at the conference.
However, she is NOT salaried and the conferences are NOT
mandatory nor are they job training. So I think it would be nice
if the company paid OP her hourly rate to attend the
conferences, but I agree with the poster who likened this to
tuition reimbursement.
#Post#: 48130--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: JeanFromBNA Date: March 2, 2020, 1:10 pm
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I have a small business, and pay four or eight hours depending
upon whether you attend a half day or full day seminar or
conference related to professional development. It's paid
whether the seminar or conference is a job requirement, like
professional education for maintaining a certification, or
skills that are not essential, but could benefit the company. If
you want to go to ComicCon, that's what PTO is for.
In your case, although you're losing pay, are you gaining skills
or certifications that would be beneficial if you left this job,
and hard or expensive to obtain? For example, if you attend a
seminar for certification in a skill that's economically
valuable on your resume that costs $400, but you lose $100 in a
day's pay, it might be worth the trade off.
#Post#: 48138--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Rose Red Date: March 2, 2020, 3:30 pm
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Several posters have stated the OP should be paid, but the
conferences are not mandatory and it's her choice to go or not.
Nobody is forcing her to miss work. It would be nice of them to
pay for the conference and her time, but this issue is a legal
one and not about etiquette.
Like it's suggested, post to Ask A Manager or her state labor
department (or whatever it's called).
#Post#: 48141--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: TootsNYC Date: March 2, 2020, 3:57 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The fact that a legal issue exists does not mean that etiquette
does not apply.
And the answer according to etiquette can be different from the
answer according to the law.
I think the employer should pay her wages while she is there, up
to a full day's pay, if they will benefit in any way from what
she might learn while she is there.
#Post#: 48142--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: TootsNYC Date: March 2, 2020, 3:57 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=LadyJaneinMD link=topic=1645.msg48109#msg48109
date=1583153080]
What she is saying is that
If she goes to the conference, they will pay her way in. Say
$10.
If she goes to work instead, she'll get paid for that. That pays
$20-$30. Double or triple what the conference cost.
So, if she goes to the conference, she only gets $10 for the
day, whereas if she went to work, she'd get $20-30.
Does that make sense now?
[/quote]
And that $10 will NOT come in cash. It will come in the form of
the non-monetary value of the conference she has attended.
#Post#: 48143--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: TootsNYC Date: March 2, 2020, 4:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=bopper link=topic=1645.msg48114#msg48114
date=1583157632]
[quote author=Jem link=topic=1645.msg48080#msg48080
date=1583068104]
Since you are an hourly worker (not salaried) and the
conferences are not mandatory I think you can ask whether you
will be essentially doubly compensated to attend the conferences
but I don’t think your company is doing anything wrong.
[/quote]
But the OP isn't doubly compensated...the OP doesn't get the
money...the OP gets to go to the conference where they will gain
information that will be helpful to the company.
I don't see it as "tuition reimbursement" but as training.
If you went to a training class for work, you would still get
paid as it benefits the company.
[/quote]
Tuition reimbursement would generally be for night classes; it's
very uncommon for people to take classes during the work day.
#Post#: 48161--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Wanaca Date: March 2, 2020, 8:45 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I am an hourly worker. Each company has different policies. In
my current company, if they offer specific classes or seminars,
we get our hourly rate. In January my company offered in-house
classes given by a local college professor. I was paid my base
hourly rate for the total of 40 hours of the classes.
If we choose to go to other seminars, they would pay the fee but
not necessarily our hourly rate. Since I work nights, I would
have to change my hours and lose my shift premium. In my
current company, off-site college classes are not paid at an
hourly rate.
There are companies in my area that pay for tuition and hourly
rates. When I took classes at our local community college I had
several classes where over half of the students were from a
local auto manufacturer and were getting their hourly rates as
well as classes, books and lab fees. There are also local tool
shops that send their employees for classes that also pay them
their wages for going to class. While it may not be the norm,
it isn't unusual in our community college for certain classes.
#Post#: 48164--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: OnyxBird Date: March 2, 2020, 10:26 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=TootsNYC link=topic=1645.msg48142#msg48142
date=1583186270]
[quote author=LadyJaneinMD link=topic=1645.msg48109#msg48109
date=1583153080]
What she is saying is that
If she goes to the conference, they will pay her way in. Say
$10.
If she goes to work instead, she'll get paid for that. That pays
$20-$30. Double or triple what the conference cost.
So, if she goes to the conference, she only gets $10 for the
day, whereas if she went to work, she'd get $20-30.
Does that make sense now?
[/quote]
And that $10 will NOT come in cash. It will come in the form of
the non-monetary value of the conference she has attended.
[/quote]
Yes, but the OP seems to be saying that the choice to go to
conferences is voluntary. If the OP doesn't consider the
conference/seminar to be valuable enough to her personally to be
worth missing paid work hours and they're truly voluntary, then
all she has to do is not go to those conferences/seminars. The
employer has presumably done a cost-benefit analysis and decided
that the value to the company of employees attending the
conference is more than the registration cost but less than the
cost of paying employees to go to conferences. The employees who
want to go need to do the cost-benefit analysis on their own
end: does the conference value to themselves (not the company)
exceed the cost of lost work hours or not?
From the employer's perspective, there's a whole spectrum of
possible levels of value for a conference:
[list type=decimal]
[li]If the employer considers it necessary for the OP to do her
job, then it's work that should absolutely be paid, but in that
case, it would also be mandatory.[/li]
[li]If the employer considers it non-essential but valuable to
the company to the point that they really want the OP to go
(either to learn or to represent the company), then they would
have good incentive and/or obligation to pay for the entire cost
(registration and work hours) of having an employee attend as
work.[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference is mildly
useful/relevant, but not valuable enough to outweigh the costs
of paying someone to attend, then it's not cost-effective to
"send" someone to the conference (i.e., to have someone attend
as work on paid time), but there is value in facilitating
attendance for employees who wish to attend on non-work time for
their own personal development. (But it's basically like tuition
reimbursement for learning pursued in one's own time, not
work.)[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference has zero value to
them, then there's no value (except possibly employee morale) in
offering to pay anything towards it at all, and any employee
wanting to go would have to both sacrifice the paid work hours
and pay the registration fee.[/li]
[/list]
The OP's employer seems to be falling at #3. As long as they're
1) not trying to dictate how she spends her time at the
conference or demand she do work for them there (e.g.,
representing the company by presenting/recruiting/etc.), 2) they
make it clear up front what they're offering to cover (only
registration costs versus registration and paid time), and 3)
they aren't "unofficially" penalizing people who choose not to
attend conferences, then I don't see anything inherently wrong
about it.
Personally, I am looking at this as someone who generally
dislikes conferences. They're relevant in my line of work, so I
go to some conferences because my employer/customers ask for it,
and it's paid work time. But if they didn't ask me to go as
work, there are few, if any, work-relevant conferences that I
would consider attending at my own time and expense. Paid work
travel of any type at my company requires advance approval, and
approval requires a business justification--they're not miserly
about it, but requests to attend conferences without a clear
business reason to go (e.g., customer request, presenting
papers, direct relevance to a specific project that will fund
the travel, etc.) can and do get turned down.
BTW, for those discussing that salaried exempt employees
couldn't have their pay docked for missing work to attend a
conference, that may be true, but my understanding (from reading
"Ask a Manager") is that it would be perfectly legal to require
that non-working time to be deducted from whatever vacation time
the employer allots, so while the employee wouldn't actually
lose pay, if the employer doesn't count it as work time, they
would still have to decide if that activity was worth
sacrificing that amount of their vacation allotment.
#Post#: 48173--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Hmmm Date: March 3, 2020, 8:19 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=OnyxBird link=topic=1645.msg48164#msg48164
date=1583209592]
[quote author=TootsNYC link=topic=1645.msg48142#msg48142
date=1583186270]
[quote author=LadyJaneinMD link=topic=1645.msg48109#msg48109
date=1583153080]
What she is saying is that
If she goes to the conference, they will pay her way in. Say
$10.
If she goes to work instead, she'll get paid for that. That pays
$20-$30. Double or triple what the conference cost.
So, if she goes to the conference, she only gets $10 for the
day, whereas if she went to work, she'd get $20-30.
Does that make sense now?
[/quote]
And that $10 will NOT come in cash. It will come in the form of
the non-monetary value of the conference she has attended.
[/quote]
Yes, but the OP seems to be saying that the choice to go to
conferences is voluntary. If the OP doesn't consider the
conference/seminar to be valuable enough to her personally to be
worth missing paid work hours and they're truly voluntary, then
all she has to do is not go to those conferences/seminars. The
employer has presumably done a cost-benefit analysis and decided
that the value to the company of employees attending the
conference is more than the registration cost but less than the
cost of paying employees to go to conferences. The employees who
want to go need to do the cost-benefit analysis on their own
end: does the conference value to themselves (not the company)
exceed the cost of lost work hours or not?
From the employer's perspective, there's a whole spectrum of
possible levels of value for a conference:
[list type=decimal]
[li]If the employer considers it necessary for the OP to do her
job, then it's work that should absolutely be paid, but in that
case, it would also be mandatory.[/li]
[li]If the employer considers it non-essential but valuable to
the company to the point that they really want the OP to go
(either to learn or to represent the company), then they would
have good incentive and/or obligation to pay for the entire cost
(registration and work hours) of having an employee attend as
work.[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference is mildly
useful/relevant, but not valuable enough to outweigh the costs
of paying someone to attend, then it's not cost-effective to
"send" someone to the conference (i.e., to have someone attend
as work on paid time), but there is value in facilitating
attendance for employees who wish to attend on non-work time for
their own personal development. (But it's basically like tuition
reimbursement for learning pursued in one's own time, not
work.)[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference has zero value to
them, then there's no value (except possibly employee morale) in
offering to pay anything towards it at all, and any employee
wanting to go would have to both sacrifice the paid work hours
and pay the registration fee.[/li]
[/list]
The OP's employer seems to be falling at #3. As long as they're
1) not trying to dictate how she spends her time at the
conference or demand she do work for them there (e.g.,
representing the company by presenting/recruiting/etc.), 2) they
make it clear up front what they're offering to cover (only
registration costs versus registration and paid time), and 3)
they aren't "unofficially" penalizing people who choose not to
attend conferences, then I don't see anything inherently wrong
about it.
Personally, I am looking at this as someone who generally
dislikes conferences. They're relevant in my line of work, so I
go to some conferences because my employer/customers ask for it,
and it's paid work time. But if they didn't ask me to go as
work, there are few, if any, work-relevant conferences that I
would consider attending at my own time and expense. Paid work
travel of any type at my company requires advance approval, and
approval requires a business justification--they're not miserly
about it, but requests to attend conferences without a clear
business reason to go (e.g., customer request, presenting
papers, direct relevance to a specific project that will fund
the travel, etc.) can and do get turned down.
BTW, for those discussing that salaried exempt employees
couldn't have their pay docked for missing work to attend a
conference, that may be true, but my understanding (from reading
"Ask a Manager") is that it would be perfectly legal to require
that non-working time to be deducted from whatever vacation time
the employer allots, so while the employee wouldn't actually
lose pay, if the employer doesn't count it as work time, they
would still have to decide if that activity was worth
sacrificing that amount of their vacation allotment.
[/quote]
I think you're missing a #5.
5. Company offers a certain amount per employee of conference or
seminar registration reimbursement as a employee benefit. I know
it's not a popular opinion in this group, but sometimes
employers to offer benefits that are primarily benefits to the
employee with the focus on employee retention.
I also thought of a personal instance. My company will pay for
some online training classes. Many that I take are for "stretch
assignments" or technologies that I want to learn about but are
not directly related to my current job. It is expected that I'll
take these classes on my own time. Will they eventually benefit?
Yes. But it is also important to me to personally invest my own
time in my career growth.
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