Bi-monthly pay systems/military time confuses workers

Many of us currently work with an employers who pays us on the Bi-monthly payroll system. Also many of these same employers calculate the hours and minutes worked in military time.

The problem many of us have is that we don't fully understand the way this system works, sometimes our checks can vary 50-150 dollars or more from paycheck to paycheck even though many of us consistently work 40 hrs. per week except when we get paid overtime which makes calculating pay even more confusing under this system.

The system has been explained to us several times but we still have an extremely difficult time calculating our hours and pay because of the military time and the way that the days worked per pay period seems to vary by one, two or sometimes three days? per pay period.

Quite a few of our co-workers also seem to be confused by this system.

We've come to the point, eventually, of just accepting whatever pay we get because figuring out if our wages are correct or not is just to difficult and frustrating.

Other jobs we've had generally paid weekly and it was shown in regular time not military time.....we simply got paid for forty hours and whatever overtime we happened to work and it was clearly reflected on the checkstub.....no surprises.....easy to check and calculate.

Why are some payroll systems, or possibly many, going towards bi-monthly payroll systems and military time.....these bi-monthly/military time pay systems seem to disadvantage the workers and leave them powerless to defend themselves with payroll discrepencies unless they have some kind of accounting background.

We would like the U.S. Labor department to attempt to regulate and limit this payroll practice to protect workers who are paid hourly etc.

It seems to us that this bi-monthly/military time pay system gives the employer an unfair advantage when payroll disputes and questions arise causing many employees to shake their heads and say....."ok, whatever"....."I don't want to make them mad and lose my job"....."I can't figure this out anyway, maybe I'm just stupid."

This doesn't seem right to us.

We the undersigned agree with the sentiments of this author and wish for the U.S. Department of Labor and other associated U.S. regulatory agencies to better regulate and restrict this method of calculating payroll which puts hourly workers at a great disadvantage when attempting to calculate if their wages are accurate or not and makes them susceptible to be shorted on their paychecks.