Did Daylight Savings Time Affect Your Pay?

When Daylight Saving Time ends in autumn, we “fall back” and set our clocks back by one hour. The change takes place as midnight strikes (or, if you want to get technical, right after 11:59 p.m.). Once we hit midnight at the end of daylight savings, the clock jumped back to 11 p.m.

However, when we “fall back” in the autumn months, hourly workers may find that their paychecks are affected. ("Springing forward," when we begin a period of daylight savings, does not incur this problem.)

If you're paid hourly — and whether your work hours are logged by a computer that is susceptible to error, or a person, who is also susceptible to error — and you were working at night as we fell back for Daylight Savings, you might not have been paid correctly.

It's important to check your next pay stub or your hourly work log to be sure your hours were tallied correctly. If you worked during the recent Daylight Saving Time change and worked through midnight, you shouldn't be paid for one hour: you should be paid for two hours' worth of work.

Refer to the Fair Labor Standards Act for an example:

The scheduled shift starts at 11:00 p.m. and ends at 7:30 a.m. The next day, your employee works an eight- hour shift and receives a 30-minute lunch break.

On the Sunday that Daylight Savings Time starts at 2:00 a.m., the employee does not work the hour from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. because at 2:00 a.m. all of the clocks are turned forward to 3:00 a.m. Thus, on this day the employee only worked 7 hours, even though the schedule was for 8 hours. On the Sunday that Daylight Savings Time ends at 2:00 a.m., the employee works the hour from 1:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. twice because at 2:00 a.m. all of the clocks are turned back to 1:00 a.m. Thus, on this day the employee worked 9 hours, even though the schedule only reflected 8 hours.

Wage theft can happen in a number of ways, but because Daylight Saving's "fall back" only happens once a year, it's very easily forgotten about. Make sure you get paid what you deserve, no matter what the clock says.