Link Employee Workbooks To Master

I am trying to put together a small rota/hours manager. I would like each employee to have their own workbook file and update it everyday. Then I would like to have a master workbook which reads each workbook and returns the data inside the workbooks when opened or on the press of a button. I have looked at paste special and other linking ways, but couldnt quite get them to work. Is it possible for the master workbook to keep the data retrieved in date order and then perform a calculation for each row/employee to calculate that days wages. (rate of pay stored in Pay_Rate sheet.) Finally, if there is an easy solution would it matter if the employee spreasheets were password protected?