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note that these people are in the age range where in most of the western world you have some but not all of the rights and responsibilities of an adult.

According to http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/childlbr.htm "Minors age 16 and 17 may perform any job not declared hazardous by the Secretary, and are not subject to restrictions on hours ". So these people are old enough that if they were US citizens they could work in the US. In the UK things are similar but slightly more complex (mainly that things are defined in terms of school years rather than actual age).

I'm not saying there aren't problems here but it's not exactly "child labour" in the conventional sense of the term.

'Computer professionals' are exempt from FLSA at certain salary levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/index.htm

I remember when that Cobra (or, Corba?) thing was passed, making it possible to keep your health insurance between jobs. Big joke. My insurance was costly while I was employed. When I was laid off, the price quadrupled.

It's COBRA (consolidated omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1986), and you are wrong. The price didn't quadruple, you are just now responsible for all of the premium. Prior to losing your job your employer was fitting 3/4 of the bill, and you kicked in the rest. COBRA benefits allow you to continue your coverage as long as you pay all of the premium. Which is still a deal, especially if you have ongoing medical needs when you lose your job. See here for details.

At least in the US, Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) explictly exempts people delivering newspaper from both minumum wage and overtime laws.

piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.

Piece work is legal in the UK, so long as the worker is still paid the minimum wage.

It was easy enough to find that the same applies in the USA: Employers may pay employees on a piecerate basis, as long as they receive at least the equivalent of the required minimum hourly wage rate and overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a workweek. (Link)

For some reason this never seemed to apply when I worked a paper route as a kid. :/

piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.

Piece work is legal in the UK, so long as the worker is still paid the minimum wage.

It was easy enough to find that the same applies in the USA: Employers may pay employees on a piecerate basis, as long as they receive at least the equivalent of the required minimum hourly wage rate and overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a workweek. (Link)

Good god, that’s hard to follow. There are so many links I can’t tell which one is the main article, there are acronyms that I don’t recognise, and it’s not tied together at all. The flow of information just jumps from one thing to another with little apparent connection between them. It’s also incorrect.

Let me see if I’m understanding this, and make it easier to follow...

To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ.

According to the Federal Register (PDF), an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) Emergency Review was requested to launch the “Jobs for America’s Job Seekers Challenge”, a joint initiative by the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers.

Now we hit the first non sequitur... how is the development and maintenance of ideascale.com related to the Jobs for America’s Job Seekers Challenge?

A Monster.com ad (cached) seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com — in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US).

The connection is – apparently – that the same people developing and maintaining the IdeaScale website will presumably also be designing the platform to “allow toolmakers and developers to present their free online job tools to workforce development experts and jobseekers for discussion, rating, and voting”. That’s a bit of a stretch, but okay. (As kdawson correctly pointed out, “There’s no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.” Wait a second... did kdawson actually get something right? At any rate that still doesn’t make up for posting this atrocity to begin with.)

Now we hit the second non sequitur... what does IdeaScale’s other contest/survey have to do with this one, other than being hosted by the same company? Does the results of a previous survey on how to “strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness” have anything to do with this contest? They have no control over the results of the project: they’re just designing the system to take submissions and allow people to vote on them...

Last May, in a similar White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm to “strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness”, legalizing marijuana was one of the highest-voted ideas.

As an American software developer, I've heard similar stories from other European coders, and I'm curious as to why we've not heard of a frantic rush to outsource coding work to India and other Eastern countries like we have in the U.S. It seems that you guys are compensated more generously over there, so one would think there would be an increased pressure to do that. Are there legal restrictions that prevent it, or does it go on and we just don't hear a lot about it?

Another thing that doesn't often get mentioned is how U.S. employers seem to forget how "salary" works. I recently started at a new company, and being inside of their 90-day probationary period, the company policy is that I don't get paid for holidays. The company shut down on Thursday and Friday over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and so I was not paid for those days even though I'd worked the days in the week prior to those shutdowns. It's actually a violation of federal law (29 CFR 541.602) to do that (unless they want to reclassify me as an hourly), but they seem to not know/care. I'm not pressing the issue right now, but rest assured it will be brought up at a more politically expedient time.

They aren't breaking the law doing it. Note the exceptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act - both salaried professionals and well compensated hourly computer jobs are exempt from the overtime rules. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/screen75.asp

he regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock"...Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work"...As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried".

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all of those statements are patently false. Yes "time on the clock" is very specifically defined, and as you'll see, there is specific language regarding "on call" work when not on the work premises to clarify that this work is NOT considered "on the clock". There is absolutely no truth to your assertion that hours worked in excess of 40 hours for salaried employees needs to be paid. The reality is, once you've been deemed "exempt", you are paid for the job you do, not the hours you work. Typically, this means that you find a balance between how many hours you put in at certain times with others to "cancel out" any hours in excess of 40.

here is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep)

Again, this is simply not true. There seems to be (in my experience) to be a large misconception that an employer is required to put limits on what constitutes a "work day" and to provide "breaks". There are absolutely NO labor laws in the US that require either of these items for workers over the age of 16.

Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.

Oh how I wish that were true. If it were, I'm owed some serious back wages, but alas, it is not at all true. Moreover, if you believe that you can make a potential employer abide by such demands, I wish you good luck in your job search.

he regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock"...Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work"...As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried".

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all of those statements are patently false. Yes "time on the clock" is very specifically defined, and as you'll see, there is specific language regarding "on call" work when not on the work premises to clarify that this work is NOT considered "on the clock". There is absolutely no truth to your assertion that hours worked in excess of 40 hours for salaried employees needs to be paid. The reality is, once you've been deemed "exempt", you are paid for the job you do, not the hours you work. Typically, this means that you find a balance between how many hours you put in at certain times with others to "cancel out" any hours in excess of 40.

here is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep)

Again, this is simply not true. There seems to be (in my experience) to be a large misconception that an employer is required to put limits on what constitutes a "work day" and to provide "breaks". There are absolutely NO labor laws in the US that require either of these items for workers over the age of 16.

Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.

Oh how I wish that were true. If it were, I'm owed some serious back wages, but alas, it is not at all true. Moreover, if you believe that you can make a potential employer abide by such demands, I wish you good luck in your job search.

he regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock"...Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work"...As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried".

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all of those statements are patently false. Yes "time on the clock" is very specifically defined, and as you'll see, there is specific language regarding "on call" work when not on the work premises to clarify that this work is NOT considered "on the clock". There is absolutely no truth to your assertion that hours worked in excess of 40 hours for salaried employees needs to be paid. The reality is, once you've been deemed "exempt", you are paid for the job you do, not the hours you work. Typically, this means that you find a balance between how many hours you put in at certain times with others to "cancel out" any hours in excess of 40.

here is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep)

Again, this is simply not true. There seems to be (in my experience) to be a large misconception that an employer is required to put limits on what constitutes a "work day" and to provide "breaks". There are absolutely NO labor laws in the US that require either of these items for workers over the age of 16.

Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.

Oh how I wish that were true. If it were, I'm owed some serious back wages, but alas, it is not at all true. Moreover, if you believe that you can make a potential employer abide by such demands, I wish you good luck in your job search.

he regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock"...Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work"...As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried".

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all of those statements are patently false. Yes "time on the clock" is very specifically defined, and as you'll see, there is specific language regarding "on call" work when not on the work premises to clarify that this work is NOT considered "on the clock". There is absolutely no truth to your assertion that hours worked in excess of 40 hours for salaried employees needs to be paid. The reality is, once you've been deemed "exempt", you are paid for the job you do, not the hours you work. Typically, this means that you find a balance between how many hours you put in at certain times with others to "cancel out" any hours in excess of 40.

here is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep)

Again, this is simply not true. There seems to be (in my experience) to be a large misconception that an employer is required to put limits on what constitutes a "work day" and to provide "breaks". There are absolutely NO labor laws in the US that require either of these items for workers over the age of 16.

Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.

Oh how I wish that were true. If it were, I'm owed some serious back wages, but alas, it is not at all true. Moreover, if you believe that you can make a potential employer abide by such demands, I wish you good luck in your job search.

An independent contractor who has only 1 customer is by law considered an employee.

Wrong.

If you're provided a desk, equipment of any kind, security access as an employee is (doesn't have to sign in, etc), is issued commands and job tasks by management, averages over 36 hours per week over a 3 month period or longer, has a dedicated manager,

Wrong.

is expected to show up and work regular hours, etc

I guess if you list enough items, eventually you hit one that is vaguely correct. There are many criteria for determining if an individual is treated as a regular employee or a contractor. None of which are hard and fast 'rules'. Each is determined on a case-by-case basis. Here are some basic guidelines to help: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/scope/ee14.asp

In fact, in many states, it is ILLEGAL to have an "independent contractor" not be on the books if at any time their contract is open ended or not related to a specific task with a defined completion date.

This sounds odd. I haven't read any specific state requirements except California's which doesn't say this. Do you have an example?

I had an employer try to pull this BS in CT. He thought it would be a great idea to fire us all, hire us back at a 10% pay raise, but save all the benefits, vacation, Social security and HR costs, etc. he saved about $300/week per each of us, and we got $50-100 more... Come tax time, we found out the hard way that just because an employer doesn't pay your matching SS costs and medicare, that does NOT mean it does not have to get paid... i had a $4K tax debt to deal with under this arrangement.

We spoke to a lawyer, and the state department of labor, and the guy got fined big time, and we each got the back pay X3, our tax debt reassigned to his firm, and 10% of what they took out of his ass for reporting him. During the process, he terminated us all instantly, so we also got compensation for unlawful termination and loss of work pay (plus unemployment on top). They also found out he'd been doing this for YEARS in cycles, and got him for a few hundred grand in unpaid taxes, and last I heard he was still serving a 9 year prison sentence for tax evasion (he tried to move all the money and the house to relative's accounts so they could not put leans on it when he refused to pay up). They took everything he had, business home and cars.

Contractors by definition can not be on salary. If you;re buddy is only paid 40 hours as a contractor, he needs to send them a bill and threaten to send a copy to the labor board and the attorney general of the state. Have him tell them he wants time and a half back pay, plus time and a half vacation compensation, plus $300 per payroll period in leiu of stiffer fines from the government, and give them a copy of the FLSA sections refering to the definitions of contractor and employee.

You sure do have a lot of stories.

If he's on the payroll, then I'm sure labor laws in his jurisdiction will very likely require that he be paid a certain amount per hour for being on call.

Not Likely if he's in the U.S.

in the Information Technology field? This might go some way to explain it.

Did Yahoo not think that women engineers would be present at this event? They make up roughly ten percent of engineers as a whole. Furthermore, did they think that there was some way that women attendees would be perfectly comfortable watching other women objectified on a stage?

It's not that I mind women being objectified for money -- the women involved are handsomely rewarded for their parts in this business deal. I do mind people in my field saying that they do everything they can to make women comfortable in our field, then turning around and saying that they don't understand why anyone would be offended by this.

I find this very presumptuous. There are plenty of women who enjoy other women, and men who enjoy other men, and people who enjoy both, and people who enjoy neither. The person's genitalia has little to do with it.

Did Yahoo not think that women engineers would be present at this event? They make up roughly ten percent of engineers as a whole. Furthermore, did they think that there was some way that women attendees would be perfectly comfortable watching other women objectified on a stage?

Hell, there's women present in some of the pictures from the event -- I would love to hear their thoughts on this and what it was like being there.

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/12454_large_Yahoo_Hack_Event.jpg

in the Information Technology field? This might go some way to explain it.

Did Yahoo not think that women engineers would be present at this event? They make up roughly ten percent of engineers as a whole. Furthermore, did they think that there was some way that women attendees would be perfectly comfortable watching other women objectified on a stage?

It's not that I mind women being objectified for money -- the women involved are handsomely rewarded for their parts in this business deal. I do mind people in my field saying that they do everything they can to make women comfortable in our field, then turning around and saying that they don't understand why anyone would be offended by this.

Minimum wage *is* set at the state level, and the effective minimum wage is the higher of the two. This is probably a good thing, as some states have excessively low minimum wage laws. (Kansas is currently $2.65) Source: US Department of Labor. http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm

I should note you are partially correct if an employee is paid on hourly basis, they must be at $27 an hour and are still exempt from overtime pay. However they would still be paid straight time for hours worked over.

From: http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm

To qualify for the computer employee exemption, the following tests must be met:

        * The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour;
        * The employee must be employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing the duties described below;
        * The employeeâ(TM)s primary duty must consist of:
                  1. The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
                  2. The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
                  3. The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
                  4. A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.

US Federal law dictates a minimum pay of $455 a week or just shy of 24k. http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/main.htm There are also some specific references to computer related exemptions in the link above.

What you're missing is that you've been working for companies that have ripped you off and screwed you over, because you didn't know your rights or the law, and let them. If you were screwed out of enough money to be worth the legal fees, you could, indeed, sue for back wages (assuming you could document the unpaif overtime, which you probably can't) and would likely win.

Turns out that the federal standard on hourly rate is a lot lower than it is in California, though (about $27/hour vs, IIRC, $42), so you only need to be making about $50k. There are other requirements, though:

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm

Some states (like California) have stricter standards.

The only other ways you can be salaried exempt are either as management, a corporate exec, or a licensed (or regulated) professional. Management requires (among other things) that you spend over half your time in direct supervisory duties, corporate execs must have very broad discretion in how they do their job, and regulated professionals are, well, regulated. If you don't need permission from the state (or the feds), you're not one.

If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

Requires that employers pay for breaks. Doesn't say anywhere that they have to give them. See, for example, here. 22 states have some regulation of the matter, although that regulation may be narrowly tailored - applying either to factory workers only, or even, in Illinois, to Cook County hotel workers only. Thanks for the pointer to the site, though - I've never worked in any of those states, and have never encountered the rule.

US labor laws: http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/

The rest of the industrial world (you know, all those countries with universal health care) do not have this problem. The United STates, with its unregulated private market DOES have it. Your private health insurance can refuse to treat your cancer based on "pre-existing conditions;" guess what, the Sécurité Sociale or the National Health Service cannot.

Guess what: in the US you cannot exclude on pre-existing conditions either.

The minimum wage in American Samoa used to be less than the standard Federal rate, but that is changing now.

On the other hand, the recent recovery bill allows American Samoa tuna canners special tax breaks.

(wash hands, stay home when sick, etc.);

Easy for you to say. Regardless the "protection" I have in place via the Family and Medical Leave Act, my boss will make sure I am unemployed if I don't work like a rented mule.

Do NOT give me the "Then get another job" speech. I don't have the income to support the family I have without a job more than a month. I refuse to gamble with the well being of my family. Right or wrong, that is the situation, and I am not even close to the only person in this position.

...throw in some business management courses

Agreed. I'm 55 and I've been writing software since 1972. I only have an AAS -- I don't think CS degrees even existed when I was in school. Life was good until Jan, but then I was RIFed (first time for me). Now I'm bobbing along in a sea of baccalaureal hammerheads. Ever see the movie "Open Water"? Feels like that. I'm also going to try to get some relevant education and a degree or certification, since I have access to govt Trade Adjustment Allowance (TAA) funding ($13k). That should cover .... um .... about 2 hours of first year art history at Carnegie-Mellon SEI. Yee-ha. And meanwhile the COBRA will be eating $1100/mo.

Some unrelated observations/opinions:

• Older IT workers are generally better compensated, either because they've been loyal to the company, or they've amassed a substantial base of industry-relevant knowledge.
• Expensive workers float to the head of the RIF list.
• The cost of hiring a full-time worker is considerable. Virtues like flexibility, the willingness to learn and adapt, and the ability to "fit" into the culture and infrastructure of a company can be far more important than a canned education. These traits can be the hallmarks of older workers; at least I hope they are for me. Granted, I have worked with some crotchety, stubborn, command-line, two-finger-hunt-and-peck old coots.
• Younger, agile brains can more easily think outside the box.
• Older, more experienced brains know there's more than one box.
• A previous post mentioned the "ten thousand hours" threshold to achieve competency on a subject (probably referring to the book "Outliers"). On how many chips, operating systems, languages, and applications can you claim that kind of proficiency? Multiply that by 6 the next time you see one of us old farts. I don't wish to be judgmental, pedantic or dismissive. To provide some balancing perspective, I'll acknowledge that 60% of my accumulated proficiency would only be demonstrable in a museum.
• I know the lyrics of every "Beach Boys" song, but I'll be damned if I remember where I parked the truck.
• Twitter? No thanks. You really don't want to get me started on my prostate....

osha is under the department of labor

http://www.dol.gov/dol/aboutdol/copyright.htm

Background: I am an American. I have usually voted Republican but not always. I am a Senior Programmer/Analyst by title, a development team lead by actual assigned task, at a Fortune 500 company.

Our company has a mandate to bring in technical consultants people from Patni or HCL. There is no interest in the best and the brightest, or the best for the job; they want the cheap body count. Of the three interviews of Patni folks we've had, two were great and the third couldn't tell me what "static" meant as a C keyword. The bosses would have been fine with any of them - it's just body count to them. In my experience, that's how managers in most big companies think - adequate body count, not best available.

Wikipedia says the H-1B program...

... allows U.S. employers to employ foreign guest workers in specialty occupations. The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor...

A company would at least claim in public that it brought in the H-1B because it couldn't find an adequate citizen. (To do otherwise would be PR suicide.) If they lay off a citizen employee who could perform the H-1B employee's tasks in an adequate fashion, they now know exactly where to find a citizen employee who can perform that H-1B's tasks.

However, assuming Wikipedia has it right, that is not, in fact, the rule of law. To quote:

The DOL's [Strategic Plan http://www.dol.gov/_sec/stratplan/strat_plan_2006-2011.pdf%5D, Fiscal Years 2006-2011 (pg. 35) states: "... H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

But it doesn't seem right to me. In fact, it seems like an area where people who don't like the H-1B program should do some lobbying of their elected representatives.

Assuming a roughly equally qualified citizen and H-1B are available for a job in the US, I believe the citizen should be given preference. Maybe that makes me protectionist but it seems morally correct. Citizens of a country should have some preferential treatment in that country over non-citizens, including in matters of employment.

Are there other countries that allow non-citizens to come in to work under such a scheme, specifically allowing them to be employed instead of qualified citizen workers? I really don't know. Someone educate me.

I believe that only persons who are A) salaried, and B) managing other people are exempt from overtime pay. This is set at the federal level by the Fair Labor and Standards Act.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/

Some companies can do tricky things with switching around hours to prevent overtime pay, it depends on when their accounting period is for payroll. EX: I worked at a company whose payroll began each week on Fridays, so if you were called in on when you had Friday off, or worked extra hours on it, they would have you work less on any day Monday through next Thursday, and even though you may have worked 45 hours in the last M-F period, you wouldn't get overtime pay.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_hipaa.html) helps assure continued health insurance coverage for employees and their dependents. Starting July 1, 1997, insurers can impose only one 12-month waiting period for any pre-existing condition treated or diagnosed in the previous six months and your prior health insurance coverage will be credited toward the pre-existing condition exclusion period as long as you have maintained continuous coverage without a break of more than 62 days.

If you have had group health coverage for two years, and you switch jobs and go to another plan, that new health plan cannot impose another pre-existing condition exclusion period.

If, for example, you have had prior coverage of only eight months, you may be subject to a four-month, pre-existing condition exclusion period when you switch jobs. If you've never been covered by an employers group plan, and you get a job that offers such coverage, you may be subject to a 12-month, preexisting condition waiting period.

Hated lots of things about Hillary's plan for government-run health care, but HIPAA was one excellent thing to come out of it. (the downside is that everybody's group healthcare costs have gone up now that insurer's can't use "pre-existing condition" clauses to stop paying for treatment of chronic conditions after someone changes jobs).

Great, go try and collect your overtime as an IT worker. It is on the law books that they have to pay OT after all. Except oooooops most IT people are exempt from OT now. A Union of IT people might fix something like that. A person "who are paid at least $455 per week on a salary basis" won't.

Sera

Just for future reference, that's against the law. If it was recent and you feel like being an asshole, you may want to contact the department of labor.

>>Medicine, for example, used to be almost entirely dominated by men. Now many medical schools have 50 percent or more women in their entering classes.

No, *doctors* were mostly men. Nurses, on the other hand, have always been and still are overwhelmingly female. Even with female med school students making up almost 50% of the student body, RN's are *over 92%* female.

So think about that. 92%. I think it's funny that we make such a big deal about women finally making up half of the med school population while the nursing programs are completely ignored.

source:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/12913.html
http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-nursing-05.htm

-b

No, they don't: http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/breaks.htm. They only mandate that "short" breaks be paid. But you don't HAVE to have a lunch period at all, so states are usually the more restrictive of the labor laws.

If you're being pressured, calling your state DOL is probably the best bet. Also, audio recording devices are cheap, and IIRC, most states allow recording as long as one party is aware.

The reason we in IT get abused with work hours is due to Federal law that exempts us from overtime payment.

No unions are needed, or even professional organizations.

All that is needed is to remove I.T. workers from the list of jobs that are exempt from the overtime wage laws.

As soon as employers have to pay for all those hours, the overtime will stop real fast.

A few years ago I was on an SAP conversion project. I calculated that if I have been paid straight time, never mind overtime, for all the extra hours I had logged, I would have been paid over $35,000, JUST FOR THAT YEAR, and the year wasn't over yet.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/hrg.htm#8

But this comment thread is not talking about the professional exemption; it's talking about the executive exemption (PDF), which applies to managers. Here's the original comment again:

Is there an actual codified definition of what constitutes a "manager"? If not, what would stop them from defining whoever they want (or everyone for that matter) as a "manager"?

The problem is that many exempt employees don't know what their rights are.

Subject to certain exceptions set forth in the regulations, in order to be considered "salaried", employees must receive their full salary for any workweek in which they perform any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked

The exemptions are too long to quote here, but the exemptions all cover missing entire days.

Read section 541.602

This means that as long as I get my work done, I can go home at noon every day if I wanted and they can't do anything about it.

Before someone trys to tell me I am wrong:

Be careful not to generalize... not all computer positions qualify for expemptions... only those where your PRIMARY responsibility is:

1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to
determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer
systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design
specifications;
3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to
machine operating systems; or
4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of
skills.

Essentially you need to be part of the development process to qualify for the computer exemption. I am fighting with my employer to convince them that I am non-exempt because all I do is end user and network support. If they fail to yeild then I will file a complaint with the Department of Labor, just as Apple's employees should have done!

For all of the qualifications for exempt status read: http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17a_overview.pdf

"Repeat the win over IBM? Because the employees got the better of that exchange."

In what manner is being re-classified as Non-Exempt (non-professional, blue-collar, etc.) a win?

Read the federal guidelines for Exempt employees.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.pdf

Non-Exempt = low skill, non-professional.

Be careful not to generalize... not all computer related positions qualify for expemptions... only those where your PRIMARY responsibility is:

1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to
determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer
systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design
specifications;
3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to
machine operating systems; or
4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of
skills.

Essentially you need to be part of the development process to qualify for the computer exemption. I am fighting with my employer to convince them that I am non-exempt because all I do is end user and network support. If they fail to yeild then I will file a complaint with the Department of Labor, just as Apple's employees should have done!

Read: http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17a_overview.pdf

Read the laws reguarding overtime. According the the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employee must be classified as exempt by meeting certain legal requirements, or they must be paid 1.5x their hourly wage. The law specifically states that no contract or agreement between employee and employer can override the law.

Read all about it, you very well might be a victim too!
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/

For the FLSA section 13(a)(1) exemptions to apply, an employee generally must be paid on a salary basis of no less than $455 per week and perform certain types of work that: is directly related to the management of his or her employer's business, or is directly related to the general business operations of his or her employer or the employer's clients, or requires specialized academic training for entry into a professional field, or is in the computer field, or is making sales away from his or her employer's place of business, or is in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor

Publicly available info from DOL

Refer to the entry for Mass, find Director of Department for Industrial Accidents. Unsure if info is accurate or current.

It is illegal to discriminate against veterans:

http://www.dol.gov/elaws/vets/userra/userra.asp

Even if it wasnt, I am a little shocked at all the google fanboys claiming that discriminating against veterans is somehow a good way to run a company. A lot of these people started out in a lower income bracket, worked hard and risked their lives for their country, and got an education in what little spare time they had. And then they have to deal with some hiring managers from an upper middle class background who think that military guys arent capable of thinking intelligently because they followed orders while in the service. Its pretty lame. If Google's culture is actually promoting this then shame on them.

Even under COBRA, you have to pay out of pocket to continue your health coverage. Good luck paying for that with your unemployment checks.

An 11-year old isn't legal to work, there are these pesky child labor laws in this country (duh).

The child labor laws don't stop you from hiring children.(tho your insurance might complain) They limit the types of jobs and the hours they can work. I have a 17 year old working for me at my store when she started she was 16 just above the cutoff point but still regulated as to what kinds of jobs she could do. She only works weekends for a few hours a day but it gets her use to the idea of getting to work on time and doing her job (well when she's not being a giggly teenage girl).
You can find the rules here:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/youthlabor/