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Our "elected" governor, Bev Purdue, plans her next move to desecrate our state

It’s funny how we depend on the government to ensure our laws are upheld. Then they go ahead and do something that breaks their own laws. Aggravating.

So here’s the deal. Anyone in North Carolina has to have heard that they are doing a statewide .5% pay cut for teachers. In Charlotte – the only place I can speak of – they are lowering every one’s wage by .5%, due to state and local decreases. So even if the money for your job doesn’t come out of the particular coffers affected, you still take a pay cut, in order to be more “equitable.” Hah.

Now cutting teachers salary is not illegal. Maybe not the brightest thing, given that NC teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country to begin with, but definitely not illegal. What IS illegal is the pay cut is RETROACTIVE. So whatever an employee earned for the ENTIRE school year, they will have to pay back the .5% overage.

This isn’t a “whoops, we realized that an accounting error.” And I dig a little bit of digging too, and snagged this right off the NC Department of Labor website. 

An employer can change its wage agreement with an employee at any time, regardless of what the original wage agreement was and without the employee’s permission. There are certain requirements that an employer must meet pursuant to the N.C. Wage and Hour Act (WHA) to make changes in its wage agreements, including the reduction of an employee’s pay or wage benefits:

1) An employer must notify its employees in writing at least 24 hours prior to any changes in its wage agreements that result in the reduction in pay or wage benefits, pursuant to N.C.G.S. §95-25.13(3).

2) An employer cannot make changes in pay or wage benefits that result in the retroactive reduction of wages or wage benefits that are already earned. In other words, the reduction in wages cannot take away pay or wage benefits that have already been earned up to the time of the notification. Any reduction in pay or wage benefits must be prospective from the time of notification. An employer may, however, retroactively increase an employee’s pay or wage benefits without prior notification.

And for good measure, I read through the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act, and the only exemptions not applicable to this issue. But what’s frightening even more, it states that for teachers, who only have one more pay period, that everything over will be taken out for that period. Have a nice summer, don’t let the door hit you on the way out! And for those who will owe more than they make that period? Hah, even more due negligence. If the amount is negative, depending on what factors made that be, then you will either owe them nothing, or will owe the difference. What I like is they will garnish your wage to zero, which that too is against the law (can’t garnish once it goes below minimum wage level, can’t garnish for any overtime pay as well).

What a lovely state we live in. We get tight on money, so instead of tightening up the funds of those bastards in Raleigh, they have big expensive lunches to discuss how to save money, and they decide to do it on the backs of North Carolina’s already underpaid teachers. I’m beginning to think Bev Perdue hates children, even though I was shocked to learn she has a couple of her own, although I think they are a bit grown now. We got ourselves a woman governor who doesn’t think like a woman. What’s the appeal in that. Say hello to Mike Easley Jr., we just call him “Bev” for short.