My Employer Informed Me, Two Weeks Later, That I And The Others In Our Shift Don’t Qualify For A Shift Differential Despite Recruiting Us By Telling Us That Would Be Our Pay

Location: Texas, USA

In August, I received a call from a recruiter at my current company. I was offered a position working either a morning shift with base pay or an evening shift with a shift differential of an extra .50¢ an hour. I was informed the differential would apply, but would not be included in the offer letter. I was also informed that the position is a “casual” position, which means no benefits and that the position could be terminated at any time between the beginning of the project and its culmination a year from then.

Personally, I thought this was a red flag but I’ve never been offered a differential before and believed that maybe it’s how this is normally done. If someone could tell me one way or another if that’s normal, I’d appreciate that.

I received the offer letter with the base pay and because the base pay was still much higher than the pay at my previous job, I accepted. When I started and met my other coworkers, they all had the same story of what I was told. We get paid bi-weekly, and when I got my pay I noticed that the shift differential wasn’t present. After speaking with my coworkers, we realized none of us had gotten it.

We spoke with our manager and the director of our building, the latter of whom assured us we were meant to be receiving the differential and would put in a ticket for us. I began working for the company on 9/12 of this year and according to my paystubs, i didn’t begin to receive the shift differential until 10/12, the second week of the two week pay period. I have never received back pay for the missing differential from the prior 4 full time weeks of pay.

I was paid this past Friday. I checked my paystub on Monday. I realized I was missing the shift differential for the week of 11/9 but not the week of 11/2, or the prior months up until the week of 10/12. When I brought this up to my manager yesterday, she informed me that she had spoken with HR and they had confirmed that as casual workers, we were not entitled to a shift differential and would not be receiving one going forward. She also shrugged her shoulders and stated “and it wasn’t in your offer letter, so.” and ended her statement there.

I did not receive any prior communication about this. If I hadn’t brought it up, I’m sure no one would’ve told me anything. And again, I and many others were explicitly informed over the phone that we would receive a differential. The director and manager both confirmed that we were supposed to receive the differential and we began to receive the differential for several weeks.

Is there any recourse available to us? Wouldn’t they have to at least communicate with us prior to getting rid of something they themselves told us we would be compensated with? And yes, INAL, but surely the fact that we were all told verbally by multiple different recruiters that we would be receiving this differential before abruptly, and without any kind of prior notice, constitutes some kind of violation of employment law?

This company is terribly organized and I’m looking for my first boat out of dodge as it is, as when I received a promotion with pay raise at this company the person who recruited me for the position made a mistake that would result in me not being properly compensated for my position to cover up his mistake. He fully expected me to go without the pay for the new position to cover up for his mistake that he freely admitted was in no way my fault.

I mention the above to say that, this feels really similar to wha previously happened to me in that I believe they may have made a mistake and are now trying to cover it up and smooth it over. To the best of my knowledge, no one else has been told about this change to our compensation.

If I’m wrong and we’re up the creek, then it is what it is. But I would never have taken this shift if I wasn’t going to be getting a differential, since it’s meant to be compensating us for working a different schedule to most workers and schools for peoples children. So I definitely feel upset and lied to, which obviously my feelings don’t constitute a violation of the law.

Any advice or insight is much appreciated. If more information is needed, please let me know and I’ll answer any questions I can.