Christmas 2014 my boss says he is no longer going to pay my salary.

(CA USA)

I was offered a sales position from a friend in my Bible Study group. Going to Bible Study together for over a year we became friends. He is a General contractor and needed help closing accounts, signing them on contracts and taking a down payment.

I started June 2nd 2014, and quickly caught on to the business. I sold nearly $250,000.00 by the end of 2014. I had been paid about $4,000.00 in commissions and $2,000.00 a month salary.

When I first started with him I asked for a sales contract, he said he was too busy to do that immediately but we were good friends, went to the same Bible Study and the same church, he said ” Do you really need a contract?”

After all he was paying my salary, and we were writing up new business. I brought in a ton of new work. I thought who in their right mind would screw somebody over that was making them money? So I just put my head down and did my job, and I did it well.
My sales for December were:
Residential sales $23,500.00
Commercial sales $71,000.00
On December 14th my boss waited till after that nightâs sales call and he told me he was no longer able to pay my monthly salary. I was floored, we had plenty of sales and money coming in and he claimed he was broke and no longer could afford to pay me my salary.

He said I could come into the office and call and make a $10.00 an hour for calling, but that was only for a couple of hours each day and he couldnât pay my sales expenses. I had $14,000.00 in commission due me as soon as the work was finished for residential and $7,000.00 for commercial.

Here is where things started getting really fishy. I asked to be paid on a job we started back in September and was to be finished before Thanksgiving 2014, and he said he lost money on that job and he still had not finished so he could not pay me anything on that job.

I said your taking me off salary and you are not going to pay my commissions? What am I to do? He said part of being a team player was to help a company out when they were in hard times. He also said he couldn’t buy Christmas presents for his family and that I was making more money than him. That he was not going to stand for that. And he walked away.
I kept working from home on clients through Christmas and New Yearâs. I figured he was in a bad mood because his son is in Loma Linda Hospital with cancer and he has been going through a lot. I figured he would come around. When he still wouldn’t pay any commission and he was only paying be $380.00 of my $2,000.00 salary, saying that that was for the hours I was in the office. Which I never had to be in the office to be paid all I needed to do was close business. Which I was.

So I told him that it was time for me to part ways and find a new career.

My question is does this qualify me for an Appeal?

I have phone number of client who have not got their jobs finished and has taken 3 times longer than the contract states. I also have another phone number of another client who was furious at Micah and believes him to be a con man, who had similar experience with Micah.
I have months of pay stubs showing me on salary being paid $2,000.0 a month. I have two commission pay stubs showing that I was paid commission at 10 % on jobs I was paid on.

Other than that I donât know what else I can show. UI turned me down saying I passed up good work. Which I am appealing.

Chris’s Response

Although I having trouble figuring out why in the world the EDD would deny your unemployment for quitting without good cause if you told them about this stuff that amounts to substantial changes to the terms and conditions of hire .. I can tell you I would appeal just to save my appeal rights .. and figure out what might of went wrong..

But I’d leave your former employer’s clients out of it .. as their experience and reasons for disliking him, do not align with your goal of trying to win an unemployment appeal hearing where you will have to show you didn’t accept those changes, but did try to make them work while you waited for that at-will employment ship to right itself.

There’s also the option of seeing if you might have a valid California wage complaint too.

Comments for Christmas 2014 my boss says he is no longer going to pay my salary.

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Mar 11, 2015
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Thank you.

by: Mike

The problem is the employer has no problem lying.

He has no morals or ethics, and it is becoming well known at my church, the UI decision maker has no clue as to what he will say to win.

My thought process was to show a pattern of less than truthful statements, to add validity, to my claim.

I need to send my written response to EDD before 20 days go by. What I said in the blog post minus the clients comments would be a good response?

You are right when you suggest going to the labor board too. I am filling out the paperwork to file a claim. That should not affect the UI case should it?

Thank you for your time in advance and thanks for this site. Very helpful!

Mar 11, 2015
Rating

Unemployment Appeals only have jurisdiction to resolve issue of unemployment law

by: Chris

But when another employee right is brought into an unemployment case as possibly be cause for quitting .. an official complaint may have more weight to influence the hearer of facts, as to who is provided them with the most credible story .. and in fact, a wage complaint has been proven as being the cause which prompted an employer to dismiss an employee from a job. But if you think about it .. that sort of undermines the burden the employer who has to prove .. that the discharge was for misconduct and not because an employee exercise one of their employee rights .. before they quit as a means to show their effort to preserve their job .. and that’s what can make a termination look suspicious and possibly done in retaliation .. even if the employer documents with all the appropriate written warnings.

Reverse the cause for separation to a voluntary quit.. and what I find more often than not is an employee who may of had the potential for proving good cause, kept their mouth shut about possible employer infractions and other behaviors not quite aligning with whatever the interpretation is using a “reasonable person standard” thinking their verbal story should be sufficient to prove good cause to the objective third party deciding whether they get unemployment benefits or not.

For me .. the problem exist because employees fear their employer’s reactions which often do lead to retaliation .. but then although it would be illegal for an employer to retaliate .. it’s tough to prove much of anything without documentation that proves a verbal story.

I wish you well .. even if I can’t figure out how the EDD managed to deny benefits, if you were able to prove any part of your story about

your bible study acquaintance who you trusted long to long after he substantially began to alter the terms and conditions of hire.

Hope you two communicated via email sometimes .. or at least you used it to document the conversations.

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