Stuck at workplace for 24 hours, only gets paid for 13 hours My mother is a USA citizen and a home care nurse. Her job requires her to personally visit designated family (by the company) and provide nursing assistance. As part of her job, she would get assigned to a family for a 24 hour period, but only gets paid for 12 hours. In order to provide a 24 hour service, she has to sleep at the family's place, and she can be interrupted anytime during her sleep to provide service for the family. She does not have the freedom to leave the house outside of the 12 hours paid period. So essentially, she has to be physically present at the designated family for 12 hours without pay. Her employer's justification is that there are a lot of downtime during her work period, where the family is eating and sleeping. So my question to the community, is this illegal in this country? PS. She works in NYC
It does not really matter exactly how the employer chooses to count working hours. However, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires, among other things, that the employee is at least paid the official minimum wage for each hour worked, and gets overtime pay for >40 hours per week. The Act also defines what counts as "hour worked" for these purposes. The Fact Sheet # 79D from the U.S. Department of Labor gives more details about what counts as "hours worked" for domestic services under the FLSA. The general rule is that all time during the shift counts, whether the employee is busy or not: Generally, when an employee is “on duty” (that is they must be in the home and prepared to provide services when required), they are working. The only exception is that time spent sleeping may be deducted under certain circumstances: In some circumstances, an employer may exclude up to eight hours an employee spends sleeping at the worksite from the time for which an employee must be paid. The rules are different, depending on whether the employee permanently resides at the place of work ("Live-in employee), has shifts of >=24 hours or shifts of &lt;24 hours. In your case the shift is >=24 hours, so the rule is (see page three of the document): Up to eight hours of sleep time may be excluded from hours worked, provided that: sleeping facilities are available the employee can usually sleep at least five hours without disturbance the employee agrees to exclude sleep time Even then, interruptions of sleep for work must be paid, and if the employee get &lt;5 hours sleep during a given shift, no exclusion is possible. So in summary: For calculating hourly wage and overtime pay, the employer must count at least 16 hours for each 24 hour shift, and more if the employee cannot sleep for eight hours during the shift. It probably does not matter that the employer calls it "12 hours worked", but your mother is entitled to at least "minium wage x 16" for each shift worked, and is entitled to overtime pay (at least 1.5 times minimum wage) if she works more than two shifts per week. If the shift is ever reduced to less than 24 hours, even sleep time may not be excluded.
You must follow the lawful and reasonable directions of your employer As an RN you have obligations under the law that are independent of your employment. Almost certainly, one of these is not to practice in an area which you are not skilled or qualified to do so (unless you are under adequate instruction and supervision). Remember, as an RN you, personally, are legally responsible if your advice leads to harm and you were not acting reasonably. There are plenty of nurses who have gone to jail for delivering a lethal dose of medicine that was wrongly prescribed by a doctor. Even if your advice is unlikely to lead to this, you can still be deregistered - seems a waste of a lot of education just to become an Uber driver. Further, most jurisdictions make it illegal to mislead or deceive in trade or commerce. This one won’t send you to jail. So, it appears that the instructions are unlawful and it is not misconduct if you were to, politely, refuse them. This would not give your employer grounds to fire you. However, you should document your concerns and reach out to your union and possibly consult a lawyer.
Without commenting on the relatively strange situation itself, it is still useful to actually read what was actually said than what was described in a letter from a third person, even if the relayed information is technically true. The supposed basis for the claim of a zero salary is from an email allegedly sent by the department head (appendix 15): In short, you are not teaching in 2022/2023 and you have not submitted the required outline of your research or other engagement. I am very sorry that we cannot establish that you will be doing any work expected of a faculty member. Thus we cannot pay you. Starting with the Fall semester, your pay will be reduced to zero and you will be placed on unpaid personal leave. Essentially, the professor is being put on an unpaid leave because allegedly he is not doing any work. Consequently, minimum wage laws are not engaged even if the professor is not exempt as teachers since he is not being required to do any work. In the U.S., employers generally can do this (unless a work contract provides otherwise); in many circumstances, it is called being laid off (though the term has attracted a permanent connotation in parts of North America) or being suspended. An indefinite unpaid leave can be considered constructive dismissal if the employer does not reasonably allow the employee to return to work. It may not be constructive dismissal if the unpaid leave is prescribed by binding employer policies or because the employee refuses to work (and the employer allows the employment relationship to continue). Even if it is constructive dismissal, it is not automatically wrongful.
Generally, yes, you do have to have 10 years of work for Medicare, though the formula is based on "credits" and is a bit more complicated. See https://www.ssa.gov/planners/credits.html#h1. It can in some cases be possible to "count" overseas work towards eligibility, due to agreements with certain countries. See https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/international.html. However, according to the Agreement Pamphlet for Japan: Although the agreement between the United States and Japan allows the Social Security Administration to count your Japanese credits to help you qualify for U.S. retirement, disability or survivor benefits, the agreement does not cover Medicare benefits. As a result, we cannot count your credits in Japan to establish entitlement to free Medicare hospital insurance. Note: I am also not in the legal profession, which is also the case for most people on this site. Even of those who are lawyers, they're not your lawyers, and nothing you see on this site is legal advice.
No First, there does not appear to be unlawful discrimination: there is nothing to suggest that you are a member of a protected class and were terminated because of that. Second, you were given no reason for your dismissal so your employer is not claiming you were terminated for just cause. So, in BC, an employer &quot;can end an employee's job by giving written working notice or pay&quot; and this is perfectly legal. For someone who worked for &quot;about 6 months&quot;, the notice/pay period is 1 week. So either they must give you 1 weeks work or pay you 1 weeks wages.
Given there was no answer here, I will state what I know about child abuse response, but note I am not a lawyer nor am I in Illinois, so my statements are likely generalized for most US states (individual laws vary by state, and I reside in Pennsylvania). In most US states, the police and child/youth services (that's what it's called in Pennsylvania but all states have similar services) work side by side and a complaint by the child to a police officer will have an emergency action taken to protect the child. The child is identified as a victim and the police and child/youth services have the obligation to protect the child and to keep them from harm. This is the main goal of police and children/youth services - to keep the child safe and act in the best interest of the child. Usually, a complaint to a child abuse center can take time to process. When a police complaint comes in it is more immediate, with police having more 'influence' with CYS (child/youth services). Especially when the child is in deadly danger (they were just stabbed, after all), the police may arrest the mother or abusive sibling or intervene therein to remove the child from the parents care with CYS-equivalent services working to find suitable alternative living situations for the child as a result of a order of removal/protection authorized by a judge. (PA at least had emergency situation response plans for these situations where a judge is just a phone call away). As well, the child will likely be made a ward of the state if the courts determine the mother cannot care for the child or is a threat as such (not caring enough to stop the brother may count), insomuch that the child may be removed from the dangerous situation and placed in the care of a willing relative or if none can be found will be placed in temporary foster care in a safer environment. Note that nothing happens rapidly without the initial complaint to the police. At age 16 the child is likely going to be taken more seriously (compared to a 12 year old, for example), and has the right to be allowed to reach out to hospital staff to ask to speak to a police officer - otherwise it takes a child abuse complaint from someone who knows the child and situation and that can sometimes take longer to process (though, the distance factor in the original question may make a complaint from overseas given a lower priority due to not knowing the person on a more personal in-person level)
Your legal obligation to pay income taxes is generally dependent upon where you perform the work, not where the funds you earn from doing the work are delivered. If you do work in Turkey that causes you to receive earned income, you owe Turkish income taxes on those earning, and your employer has a legal obligation to the Turkish government to make sure that those taxes get collected, or your employer will have to pay your taxes (with penalties) for you. If your employer has to do that, your employer will dock your pay to cover your obligations regardless of which bank account you use or whether you set up a corporation that does work in Turkey as a subcontracting company rather than in an employee-employer relationship. Any of the actions you propose to evade Turkish income taxes would constitute criminal tax fraud and could lead to you and the payroll officials at your employer's company who were complicit in allowing you to attempt to evade Turkish taxes spending time in a Turkish prison. Then you'd be deported. And, of course, you'd be fired probably as soon as you were criminally charged. The U.S. would cooperate with Turkey in pursuing you, your employer and your employer's payroll officials, although I don't know how the Kuwaiti government would respond.
What can we do to dismiss such report? Does she just show up at a local police department telling them that she's fine and it was her own decision? In short, yes. She shows up at a local police station, tells her side of the story including the whole bit about things getting destroyed and her getting kicked out, cites the missing persons report, and make it clear that she's not missing but an independent adult who is free and making her own decisions. Since she's over 18, she can do that. (Bringing proof of age might be helpful.) The mystery of the missing person will be considered solved from the police side. She does not have to give a specific address where she's living, just convince the officer that she's OK and making an intentional decision to create distance between herself and her mother. She could also try calling (the same local station which is convenient to her current location) before showing up to see if that satisfies the officer, and only go in if needed. Would I get in trouble for being in a relationship with her daughter since I was 20 and she was 16? We had never met in person until now, to avoid any trouble. Shouldn't be a problem, as long as it's a mutually willing (non-coercive) relationship. Her mother said the police also wanted to talk to me separately. I do not want to get involved in this at all. Can I reject it? Yes, you can reject it. You do not have to answer ANY question a police officer asks; you have the right to remain silent and/or to say only "I have the right to remain silent." To reduce the probability that they'll even ask questions, you might prefer not accompanying your girlfriend when she goes to clear the missing persons report, if she goes in-person. This adds more weight to her assertion that she's going there to clear it of her own free will, not because you're forcing her.