Very important : Employer's changed policy. Please read. Useful for other community members. thanks.
Dear Rajiv Ji,
Namaste. I am working on H1-B visa for a 50,000 employee IT company. My company, like other companies like IBM, came up with a new policy called "Non-Exempt employee" for Quality Assurance (QA)/Testing employees only who are in California (only). This policy is only for the employees in California (CA). This does not apply for employees not in CA.
Sorry, too long but please read the summary of the new non-exempt policy with my employer.
Example Scenario:-
As an example, let's say a software testing engineer/QA employee A in California is making $70,000 /year as a base salary earlier as an exempt employee (fixed base salary before this new policy). Now, they changed his/her status as non-exempt employee (meaning employee is eligible to get paid over-time as he/she will be on payroll by hourly basis).
Because this is a typical IT firm who will not pay overtime hours, what they have done is that my employer has actually reduced base salary to $40,000/year and claims that they are already paying $30,000/year ($625/week) as an overtime for extra number of hours (10 hours) we work. Basically, As an example, my employer states that $70,000 is for 50 hours (40 normal +10 extra hours). Managers will not approve timesheets if we work over 10 extra hours. They would argue that we worked exact 10 extra hours. This way they are guarded against any lawsuits from employees/DOL when they do not actually pay extra hours we worked. They created separate time sheets for non-exempt employees. We need to mention 1 hour breaks on timesheets. Again, this is not for other employees who are not in CA or who are not in QA/software testing.
If we do not work extra hours beyond 40 hours/week, then they pay remaining $625/week as a true up payment. This true up shows as an additional line in pay stub. Bottomline is that we get salary what we were promised before we joined the company. Base salary change already has an impact when taking loans because lenders are saying that we do not make enough base salary as they do not consider overtime as a fixed salary.
Can you please advice on below questions? Thanks!
1) My employer filed my PERM and showed $70,000/year as base salary. Now they reduced base salary to $40,000. Does it have any impact on green card process as base salary is reduced even though I am receiving remaining amount as true up payment?
2) For visa stamping purposes, would reduction in base salary have any impact? When we asked this question to our employer/immigration team, they said they do not know and never got back to us upon several follow-ups.
3) Would reduction in base salary (even though pay stub shows true up payment of $625/week) have any impact at Port of Entry?
4) Are there any areas of immigration that would have an impact while I am on H1-B? If so, what can I do to come over such challenges?
5) Earlier my job title was Systems Analyst in PERM application. Now my job title is Testing Analyst internally in my company. Does it have an impact?
Thanks so much!
Ankur.
