One day you might notice an anomaly between the hours you worked and the hours entered on your payslip. When this arises, you might be tempted to go up to your employer or the relevant department and request that they correct this one payment.
Before you do, it is worth checking back through your old pay slips. Many times, employers have been underpaying an employee for far longer than the employee realizes.
Sometimes underpayment is a one-off mistake
Maybe you worked a few hours of overtime last week and cannot see them included on your payslip. Or perhaps those hours do figure, but the extra hours are paid at the same rate as normal, not the higher rate that overtime can bring. Remember, too, that sometimes overtime moves from one and a half times the usual rate to twice the usual rate — when you pass another amount of hours.
Another time that you might spot underpayment is if you started late or left early one day. When you try to equate the amount of hours you missed working, with the figure you see as being put in your account, you might notice that the hourly rate is still not right. You might realize that your employer has, in fact, been starting the clock late, or ending it early for months when counting your hours worked. While five or ten minutes less might not amount to much of a difference in dollars for one day, it could amount to hundreds or thousands if your employer has been doing it for some time.
Many employees work happily on, never realizing that their employer is cheating them of money a little at a time. Using one mistake as the motivation to check your past payment history could potentially reap considerable rewards.