Which employees are paid during blackouts?

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Which employees are paid during power blackouts?

Posted at 10:52 p.m. PST Friday, Feb. 2, 2001 BY PAT LOPES HARRIS

Mercury News

Say you're toiling away when a rolling blackout hits. Does your company owe you for the time you spend waiting for the power to return?

Or say you've got a building full of workers when a rolling blackout hits. Do you owe them for the time they spend waiting for grid operators to flip the switch?

The answers to those questions vary depending on the situation.

The first thing to do is figure out whether the workers in question are exempt or non-exempt, which is labor law language for whether the workers are eligible for overtime pay.

Exempt workers, who don't receive overtime pay, are in luck if a blackout hits and their employers send them home before the end of the day.

That's because their bosses owe them a full day's pay even if they only worked part of it, according to Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the state labor commissioner.

``Exempt employees are paid for their expertise, so it doesn't matter how many hours they put in,'' Fryer said. ``They earn the same amount of money.''

A different set of rules apply to workers eligible for overtime pay, which generally but not always means they're paid by the hour.

The concept to keep in mind for these workers is whether they're still under their employer's control during the blackout.

So if employers tell workers to stick around and wait for grid operators to flip the switch and restore power, then they need to pay the workers for the time they've spent waiting.

That's even if the workers aren't doing anything but waiting, which explains why many business owners plan to send workers home if rolling blackouts persist.

``If it's a night shift and the power's out for more than an hour, I tell them to lock the place up and go home,'' said Michael Brugge, owner of Sunnyvale machine shop T-M Manufacturing Co.

But if the threat of power outages has left you counting on time off, don't start lining up those home improvement projects or day trips to Napa just yet.

Many large employers are way ahead of the game, and they've installed emergency generators to make sure everything's business as usual no matter what's happening on the grid.

``All of our stores in Northern California have backup generators and can operate with reduced lighting,'' said David Bowlby, a spokesman for Pleasanton-based Safeway Inc.

Many large companies, such as Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, have volunteered to cut back on how much juice they use during peak periods.

In exchange, they're shielded from rolling blackouts except in extreme emergencies, said Intel spokesman Mark Pettinger.

That doesn't mean the lights are blazing at Intel no matter what. The company uses reduced lighting these days, so two of three bulbs in Pettinger's office are out.

In the end, Brugge said paying employees during rolling blackouts isn't his top concern.

``I'm more worried about the continued increase in energy prices,'' he said. ``That has a much bigger effect on my bottom line.''

For more information, contact the California Chamber of Commerce at (916) 444-6670 or the Labor Commissioner's office at the Department of Industrial Relations at (415) 557-7878.

Contact Pat Lopes Harris at pharris@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5042.

-- Swissrose (cellier@azstarnet.com), February 03, 2001


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