Penalties to Commission for Salary Employees

[justdanorm]

Hi

I own several offices (In NY, NJ, GA and FL - I understand that different states have different laws). I have one employee in each office that is paid salary. When employed, the hours were explained, and agreed to, to be Tuesday-Friday 9am-5pm and Saturdays 9am-2pm.

These are the times I advertise on our websites and calls come at starting at 9. If I were a potential customer, I would expect the phones to be answered at 9. Or if I have an appointment at 9am, I expect that employee to be there to help me and not have to wait for them to show up. It looks bad for a business.

All the employees are paid salary. The problem is, I recently found a company that offers a telephone "clock-in" service where I can see what time they call from the phones in the office, and have been enlightened that most of the employees come between 10 and 50 minutes late EVERY DAY!

All employees, in addition to their excellent salaries, are paid a commission based on their sales, once per month.

My question is, can I deduct from their commissions for being late? For example, $1 per minute late. For example, if someone is 10 minutes late, 20 times in a month, thats $200 that I would deduct from the commission.

To clarify that I do everything on my part to bring potential customers in for them to make the sales, I spend approximately $20,000+ per month just in advertising.

My understanding is that I can do this because commission is not a "guaranteed wage". Its an extra incentive that I pay in addition to salary, for "good work done". Is that correct? Or am I totally off on this.

I pay commission to give them a reason to do good work and everything, but it just seems that their salaries are enough so they don't care. They'd rather sit back and relax than come to work on time and try to make more money.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.