Suing for Overtime?

An unidentified submitter asks: "There is a federal law that requires all non programmer-type jobs be compensated for overtime. Last year, over the course of a year, I have worked 500 hours of overtime without comp time, bonus, or paid overtime. I have since left the company, and currently I am attempting to sue the company for lost wages. Has anyone ever been in a similar situation, and do they have any advice/tips? Also is anyone aware of good computer/IT labor attorneys?"

Comments

Start by...

[SoCalChris]

I would start by making sure I had documentation of all of the hours I had worked and was suing for. I'm not sure how you would prove it otherwise.

Also, if you are working in an exempt position, you're probably screwed since bonuses & comp time aren't typically legally required by the company. Good luck though.

Re:Start by...

[s88]

Actually you should "start by" reading your employeement contract. Chances are you signed away any such right when you started your job.

Scott

Re:compensation != (dollars*hours)

[ctr2sprt]

The problem with unions trying to do that is they'll end up setting very specific limits: for example, 40-hour work weeks with 5 hours overtime. Net result will be that everyone will have to work that much, all the time. I think most people are willing to work overtime where reasonable; for example, if someone is sick or otherwise unavailable, other people need to step up and pick up the slack. And while we'd obviously prefer to be paid for the overtime, I think most people would be willing to do it "for free." It's only when employers start to take advantage of this willingness that we have problems.

But on the other side of the coin, look at the labor laws in much of Europe where it's impossible to work more than an hour or so of overtime. This is great for lazy slobs like myself who start complaining if they work 40 hours and 1 minute a week, but bad for people who want to pick up a little extra money. In particular, it's bad for those who are... well, not near the poverty line, but certainly on the lower end of middle class. For those people, 5 or 10 hours of regular overtime may mean the difference between eating enough and eating well. And it gives them more free time compared to getting a second job.

I think the moral of the story here is that we need common sense from both unions and management. After all, if management keeps setting up "mandatory overtime," then obviously the unions are going to find some way to effectively eliminate overtime entirely, which hurts both parties. But given the history of unions, and what we see from management right now, I have absolutely zero faith that any sort of compromise, rational or otherwise, will be reached.

Re:IT jobs

[LinuxXPHybrid]

I've been working as a software developer, but I never had chance to meet and speak with customers, end-users in my previous jobs. Now that I meet and speak with these people, I find that they have practically no clue whatsoever how much we work to accomplish a certain task. Even though the work I do raises productivity greatly and/or cuts operation cost greatly, they do not see how our digital work equates to their analog work.

I am guessing that law makers are also thinking like this; they don't get. People like Al Gore are very few. Probably people in mass media are, if not the same, similar.

Our (IT workers) overtime is somehow not considered overtime like miners work overtime and our cow-workers work overtime. It is unfortunate, but it may take a while for the general society to realize that IT workers' overtime is same as coal miners' overtime.

My advice

[inflexion]

My advice is this: quit being such a whiney gayhole. Did you have a contract with the company saying you would get paid overtime? No. You worked the extra hours to get the job done and that's what everyone in interesting professional jobs does. If you were a garbage man then I might be able to see your point...you would expect to be paid per hour worked. But a software position is more task oriented. By that, I mean instead of being expected to work 40 hour/week, you're expected to finish 1 project per quarter (or whatever arbitrary number your manager decides someone in your position should be capable of). If you can't complete the number of required projects in the time given then there's no question: you MUST work overtime and not expect to be compensated for it!

Re:My advice

[dubl-u]

Did you have a contract with the company saying you would get paid overtime? No. You worked the extra hours to get the job done and that's what everyone in interesting professional jobs does.

True, but there's generally an implicit quid pro quo. I used to work for financial traders, where 50-hour weeks were considered normal, and a few times I ended up working 50-hour days. But I never fretted about it; it was the deal I signed up for, and I knew that they'd take care of me, especially at bonus time.

Another fine way to tackle this is through profit-sharing or ownership. I love working for startups; everybody is committed to making things go. That's mainly because they like doing it, but the fact that they own a piece of it sure doesn't hurt.

But there are certainly companies out there that don't get this. Their notion is that they are playing a zero-sum game with their workers, where their goal is to maximize hours worked and minimize dollars given to workers. And they aren't up front about it, either; nobody tells you in advance that you've signed up for a death march.

This is, of course, foolishness; in the long run, it works about as well as Iraqi motivational techniques. Smart companies know that to get more, they give more. And since business is a positive-sum game, it generally works out for everybody involved.