NEW YORK-The approximately 70 field engineers for PageMart Wireless Inc. feared a St.
Valentine’s Day massacre last week after receiving a company Human Resources Department memorandum Feb. 8
advising them of a pay scale restructuring to become effective Feb. 14.
The memorandum said, in part:
“Since your salary was structured to take into account that you work more than 40 hours per week … we
will make available 10 hours of overtime each week.
“If you work a 40-hour week and 10 hours overtime
each week, you will receive the same or more pay than you receive now.”
The field engineers and technicians,
a dozen of whom either called or faxed letters to RCR, interpreted the memo to mean they would have to work at least
50 hours weekly to earn their current salaries because of a new classification conversion of their positions to hourly
from salaried.
Those field engineers whom RCR interviewed described their duties as being on-call around-the-
clock every day, with some work weeks entailing many more than 40 hours and some weeks less. However, before a
new memorandum was circulated Feb. 11, they also said they did not object to the general idea of being converted to an
hourly status from a salaried classification.
“We’ve gotten a number of e-mails and calls here from affected
employees because people are confused about the effect of the plan,” said Fred Anderson, general counsel for the
nationwide paging carrier, which is headquartered in Dallas. “We are communicating back to all that it is not the
intent of PageMart to reduce the compensation of anyone. In fact, they may earn more.”
Anderson said field
technicians and engineers would continue at their current salaries, which will be based on a 40-hour week. For hours
above 40 worked in a single week, the company will pay overtime to field technicians, who maintain and repair its
network.
“If they work more than 40 hours, they will get paid overtime, but we expect them to work (a
minimum of) 40 hours a week,” Anderson said.
There is no union representation at PageMart, the field
technicians interviewed said. However, they said they had, in an unprecedented action, conducted a few nationwide
conference calls last week with the vast majority of their peers within the company.
“We are one step closer to
being treated fairly,” one PageMart field engineer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told RCR Feb. 12 after
the second memo circulated.
“There is still [an hourly rate] pay cut of about 25 percent for working less than
40 hours, and overtime will be paid at about 8 percent more, not time-and-a-half as workers in all other (PageMart)
divisions get.”
The field engineers/technicians have agreed to work collectively in seeking a National Labor
Relations Board ruling as to whether the new overtime policy for their jobs is discriminatory because other PageMart
workers in related job categories get time-and-a-half, he said.
Anderson said the reclassification of field
engineers/technicians occurred as part of an ongoing review that PageMart, like all other companies, conducts
periodically to ensure it complies with all applicable federal labor rules. Other PageMart engineering-related
departments already have been converted to hourly from salaried workers to comply with these requirements, he
said.
Despite wording in the Feb. 8 memo that PageMart’s Human Resources Department circulated to field
engineers, there was no singular event that caused the timing of this jobs reclassification, he said.
