We are a small manufacturing company (under 50 employees) in Michigan USA.
For years now due to demand and lack of workers, we have had to require our production workers to work overtime (5 days a week, 10 hours a day for 50 hours total per week) with periodically working 55 or 60 hours. We pay them 1.5x OT as the law requires.
As the law also requires (Obamacare) and per our policies, we provide full-timers with health insurance benefits as well (FT defined in our handbook decades ago as 40 hours, but we understand with Obamacare that is now 30). They of course get other benefits for being FT like vacation, holidays, sick days, etc. as well.
Now, we have a good temp agency employee we are considering hiring in.
They have a special ADA situation and can only work 40 hours as they need to use a special limited bus schedule and can't drive.
My HR team is saying, if we hire them and offer them benefits for working 40 hours,
then we will get other employees who are tired of working mandatory OT say "I only want to work 40 hours, too, and still get FT benefits" and refuse to work OT. (Yes they probably will, we have many who already express wanting to work 32-40 and get benefits).
Then we will negatively impact our productivity and keeping up with orders and lose sales.
But if we hire this person and they work 40 and we don't give them FT benefits, then HR thinks we run afoul of the law and/or discrimination.
We also know the person can't work 50 (bus schedule would never work plus they're older and likely to not be able to handle it anyway) and we don't want to run afoul of discriminating against ADA in not accommodating them.
How can we safely & legally hire in this person at 40 and keep others at 50 and not discriminate, and yet not have employees mad that they have to work more/different for the same level of benefits as this is also potential discrimination.
Any laws, rulings, backings, or other things you can cite that we can use as backing are appreciated. Thanks.
For years now due to demand and lack of workers, we have had to require our production workers to work overtime (5 days a week, 10 hours a day for 50 hours total per week) with periodically working 55 or 60 hours. We pay them 1.5x OT as the law requires.
As the law also requires (Obamacare) and per our policies, we provide full-timers with health insurance benefits as well (FT defined in our handbook decades ago as 40 hours, but we understand with Obamacare that is now 30). They of course get other benefits for being FT like vacation, holidays, sick days, etc. as well.
Now, we have a good temp agency employee we are considering hiring in.
They have a special ADA situation and can only work 40 hours as they need to use a special limited bus schedule and can't drive.
My HR team is saying, if we hire them and offer them benefits for working 40 hours,
then we will get other employees who are tired of working mandatory OT say "I only want to work 40 hours, too, and still get FT benefits" and refuse to work OT. (Yes they probably will, we have many who already express wanting to work 32-40 and get benefits).
Then we will negatively impact our productivity and keeping up with orders and lose sales.
But if we hire this person and they work 40 and we don't give them FT benefits, then HR thinks we run afoul of the law and/or discrimination.
We also know the person can't work 50 (bus schedule would never work plus they're older and likely to not be able to handle it anyway) and we don't want to run afoul of discriminating against ADA in not accommodating them.
How can we safely & legally hire in this person at 40 and keep others at 50 and not discriminate, and yet not have employees mad that they have to work more/different for the same level of benefits as this is also potential discrimination.
Any laws, rulings, backings, or other things you can cite that we can use as backing are appreciated. Thanks.
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