I work for a company in FL that I believe has misclassified ALL of its employees as 1099 to avoid paying overtime and other things. Originally they hired me as a manager at 10.00 an hour and 5.00 a sale, 72 hours a week, They take out one half hour break a day and dock my pay if any sales come back. They then changed the pay to 10% of everything sold, still at 72 hours a week. They then changed it to 5% of sales, 72 hours a week. No overtime. These hours are required. If you didn't make any sales though and had a few chargebacks, you could literally end up making 1.00 an hour for that whole week. The question I have is if we are required to work these hours, have no set contract end date, and have all the characteristics of employees, how can we still be considered 1099? They also have some other major issues (screaming/throwing things at employees, smoking in office, lying about refunds, paperwork misplacement, classifying a fired employee as "relocated" etc,etc,etc) but this is the main issue that concerns me. I want to know if they can actually get away with this and how I can get them to change it. They have the agents there working 41 hours but only pay them 27.5 (8.00 an hour VS commission) due to the fact the have a required meeting every morning and think the agents aren't working at that time so they shouldn't have to pay. But the meeting is required! They also hire people to work like a 9-3:30 shift and change it on a daily basis making them stay till 6-7 o'clock (with no pay) stating they will get fired if they don't since FL is a right to work state and they can do what they want. I am new to FL and I don't know how the laws really are so please HELP!

*edit*
Another thing I forgot to add.. if an agent misses any of their hours they will 6.67 them and pay them only minimum wage regardless of how many dollars in sales they made. They are not allowed to make the hours up on a different shift or day...
One more thing... They did not specify the amount of hours I was to work in the paper I signed, whatsoever. They made the 72 hours a requirement later.Originally I only worked 36, but still was under 1099

What sort of a business is this anyway that they can keep doing this? I lived there for 25 years and have heard of things similar to this going on so it does not surprise me what you are saying here.

The only thing you can do is to leave and find another job elsewhere as you will probably end up getting the boot if you complain about how these people are paying or not paying you. You are correct about the employee/employer laws in Florida. They can fire you for any or no reason.

Getting them to change the way they do business would be futile as they don't intend to change even if it is wrong.

They don't want to pay their part of the employer contribution for tax purposes and can just give out 1099's to avoid this. I am sure that the employee turnover is high at that company.

You go to your State's Wage and Hour Commission, report the circumstances, provide proof - and the company (if you are correct) is warned and fined and the employees become W-2 employees. The different States have different requirements to be classified a "1099" and I do not know what Florida requires.

And I would, unfortunately, be prepared to be terminated.