In response to Gwen Lachelt’s comment in Sunday’s story about San Juan Basin Public Health in The Durango Herald, and the chaotic and demanding nature of the pandemic. Lachelt said, “It’s like being a firefighter – you’re not going to stop while you’re fighting the fire and write down your hours.”
Of course, not. But you would turn them in at the end of the day. I did this, as did my employees, every day after a hard day of bending nails. It takes five seconds. I did this for 55 years. I am not more tired from doing so. And my company had a transparent paper trail to follow labor expenses.
To figure the exempt employee’s hourly wage, all the receiver had to do was divide the weekly gross salary by 40 hours. Then, if the receiver had the total overtime hours the exempt employee turned in (in this case there were no hours turned in), the receiver would take the base hourly gross wage and multiply the overtime hours by 1.5 or two to get the gross overtime pay. Easy peasy.
There would be an exact amount to be paid to that employee – a paper trail and all. How transparent is that? It is done in the private sector all the time. It should be more important to do this in the public sector. It is taxpayer money that is being spent here with little or no transparency.
Gerald Weis
Durango
