Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Illinois Department of Labor

Our company decided that they are going direct deposit or prepaid debit card for our pay only. The third option is and I quote the corporate people "Go find another job".

After having several CNA's who don't have bank accounts come to me because they are worried I went searching.

1st...with the prepaid cards you use them as a debit card. You can only draw so much money off of them at a time unless you have a bank in which you have an account. Otherwise you are limited to I think $300.00 a day with fees.

2nd...Some of these people, actually many of them, are single mothers. They pay their rent and everything else with this check...if their landlord doesn't accept cc or debit payments they are screwed!

3rd ...From the Illinois Department of Labor website I pulled this up....

Q: Can I be required by company policy to accept direct deposit of my paycheck?
A: NO - An employer must pay each of it's employees his/her wages in a form that he/she may readily convert into cash (without the need of a personal bank account).

Now that doesn't exactly address the paycard issue but without a bank account the wages are not readily available on a paycard....so I think that is an issue...

I'm going to go talk to the administrator today...

As most of you know I take a huge issue with government or any authority people trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. I also take issue with someone trying to force me into giving up my rights. It's not for me an issue of inconvenience at this point--- it just really pisses me off that they are trying to force us to take something that from the sounds of it they can't....and telling us that if we don't comply we don't have a job...what a crock of shit. So, now I'm angry about it...Could be the fact that I'm a Libra and I don't like unfairness. Or it could be that I think all organizations are extremely corrupt. Either way...legal and illegal are pretty black and white in this case.

I am going to call down to the Dept. Of Labor this morning while at the bus stop with the kids...hopefully I can get through pretty quickly and find out for sure.

Anyone know anything about this situation?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't really know about this specific situation...however I do know my bro. in law works at one of the casinos (I also had an old boyfriend that worked there)...and everyone who works there has to get their check direct deposited! so, for instance, the old boyfriend was very bad w/ money...had screwed up w/ the bank too many times so had no account...he ended up having to be added onto one of his mom's accounts....I hope they can't force everyone to do this.

gabby1 said...

Sally, Thanks for the info...I am going to call down there this morning...I just think that they need to worry about their employees as opposed to their own pockets...a lot of those girls have the same thing, single moms, overdrawn bank accounts, NSF check issues...but they still need to have a way to pay their bills.
The bank I worked at did direct deposit but they set you up with an account right away.

Berta said...

More and more employers are making everyone go the direct deposit route, which is a faster way to get paid, really, unless you don't have a bank account. Being limited to $300 a day is awful. To pay your rent you'd have to withdraw two or three times and then hide the cash somewhere. You don't have to go with their debit card, though, right? Credit unions will open accounts for folks even if they've had a lot of NSFs and such. And my company does debit cards that work off a real bank account if anyone is interested in that (www.directocard.com).

It's a bad feeling to be forced by your employer to do something that impacts your private life.