Nordstrom to Change Its Timekeeping Procedures
The Nordstrom department store chain, accused of pressuring employees to put in extra hours without pay, said Friday that it is refining its timekeeping procedures to do a better job of tracking how long its sales staff works.
But a union official representing nearly 2,000 Nordstrom workers in the Seattle area, where the company is based, said the changes do not go far enough.
Nordstrom’s record-keeping revisions were prompted by a finding by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries last week that the prestigious retailer has violated the state’s minimum-wage act. The agency ordered the company to pay an unspecified amount of back pay.
State authorities acted after investigating complaints by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union that the company pressures employees not to report the hours they put in writing thank-you notes, delivering merchandise to customers and attending staff meetings. Some Nordstrom employees have said the company’s system of grading workers’ performances on the basis of their sales per hour has encouraged workers to “punch out” before performing these duties.
The changes disclosed Friday provide for Nordstrom stores to post sign-out sheets for salespeople who perform extra duties after normal work hours. Staffers leaving a store could punch out on the time clock but also indicate on the sign-out sheet that they are making a work-related stop on the way home. The next day, they would submit a time sheet showing how much extra time was put in.
But Joe Peterson, president of Local 1001 of the commercial workers union, said the new setup “is trying to place the burden on employees to keep records, when it’s their (Nordstrom’s) responsibility to keep records.”
Peterson also took issue with a related policy memo Nordstrom sent out this week to its 30,000 employees across the country. The memo indicated, among other things, which tasks performed away from the sales floor would be considered sales or non-sales duties for judging employees’ sales performances.
Peterson said the new policy, by classifying such work as writing thank-you notes as sales duties, would continue putting pressure on workers to avoid reporting the hours they work on these tasks.
