Can you legally with hold a pay check?

Question

can you legally withhold a pay check because a non exempt employee did not turn in a timesheet?

We are have a major problem getting our employees to turn in timesheets.

When employees do not turn in their time, other employees get paid late.

When they turn in their time sheets late i cant do job tracking.

They do not understand that even one late timesheet sets back the whole company.

We have told them that if their time is not in by 10am monday morning. They will get paid the following week, when we receive their timesheet.

Someone mentioned that is not legal, he said you have to estimate their time, even if no timesheet is given. And then when you get their time, if it was incorrect, fix it on the next payroll. Although he was not sure if this was true for us, because in his old company they were union.

If you have any info, please list where you got it. I want to have proof if any employees question it.

Answer 1

A quick call to your state's Bureau of Labor will settle this problem.  I'm sure you can't delay the checks for other people.  They've done nothing wrong.  There are laws that wages have to be paid on time.  If one person can't get his/her timesheet in, compute the pay for a standard 40 hour week or the least number of hours the employee usually works.  If he/she gets a smaller check than expected it will be a good incentive to get the timesheet in on time in the future, even if he/she gets the pay in the next check.  

Answer 2

I am not sure about this, you need to do some research online. Look for one of those websites that allow you to ask free legal questions, or call your local law clinic in your area.

Answer 3

Have the owner of the company make the job supervisor responsible for collecting the time sheets and turning them in to the office on time. He can get them all together for 15 minutes and have them fill out their time sheets at the job site. It may be on company time but is is better than trying to deal with all that confusion which actually costs the company more.

Answer 4

Where I used to work, we had a similar problem. We presented the problem to the attorneys.  The legal opinion we received was this:  It is illegal to withhold a paycheck from an employee.

However, what you can do is this:  Next time paychecks are run/printed, take the paycheck of the offending party to the Treasurer's office to be held there.  Then tell (and document to) the offending party he (she) may go to the Treasurer's office in person to pick up their paycheck - at which time the Treasurer will have a "heart to heart" talk with the offending party re the offense, what actions can be taken to correct the problem, etc., etc. I.E. although you cannot withhold the paycheck,  you CAN make it difficult on the employee until they start complying with system requirements.

Hope this helps, mule.  It worked where I was employed.