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12/7 and Overtime on a Salary?
over-timeout! asks: A company I work for (in the U.S.A.) had submitted a statement of work to a client, who waited for a month before signing the work order. The work order explicitly stated a timeline which would start from the time the order is signed. However, the client is insisting on the project being completed by a fixed date, as discussed with our company's management, instead of the deadline that starts from the signing of the work order. Although our company representatives tried to push back on the date, the client refused. Because the client is among our company's biggest customers, our company's management caved in and agreed to their deadlines. Management has told us meeting deadlines means that for the next month to six weeks all of the developers involved will have to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The contractors involved are going to get compensated by being paid by the hour. But us salaried employees are going to get nothing in return for trading in what's left of our life so someone else in the company above us can make money. Obviously this isn't fair, but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find?" A related articles on this subject discusses suing for overtime, and California residents should find this companion article pertinent, as well. What can you do when management agrees to a timeline and a workload that may make your job, as a programmer, difficult-to-impossible?
This is a state issue, not a federal one. Look up your state laws and maybe talk to a lawyer.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Uh, yes.
programmers are an exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - 29 USCA Â 213(17) --
 213. Exemption
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
You can't get overtime as a salaried programmer. I am really sorry.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
The National Labor Board has a page where you can contact your local office.
Ask them what you can do.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
To elaborate, in the EU you cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours per week. You may volunteer to work more than 48 hours, but your employer cannot insist that you do and may not punish you for refusing to.
There was a minor fuss when this EU regulation was incorporated into UK law, but it seems to have had no negative effect and provides protection for workers.
Suck figs.
IANAL, but as for the "if you are in California" part, I do recall reading of a California labor regulation that requires giving a person at least one day off a week, and specifically a day off after each six days working (the last presumably to prevent an employer on Sunday telling a worker his day off has been moved from Monday to Saturday). The law states the employer is otherwise guilty of a misdemeanor.
programmers are an exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - 29 USCA Â 213(17)
I smelled BS on this but I was wrong: See the text of the FLSA, section 213, provision 17.
Sorry for doubting you, pcwhalen. (Might want to link such things in the future, to help people like me who don't take Slashdot comments at face value. Which should be everyone...)
That exemption really sticks out like a sore thumb, I think; take a look at the other exemptions and I think you'll agree this one doesn't fit in, except perhaps in the very limited domain of server operator (who may need to do something for 70 hours in a week, as a sailor might).
IANAL. However, I just spent two weeks in a jury on a "wrongful termination" case.
In the US, there are only three reasons you can sue for this. 1) The company promised via explicit or implied contract that they wouldn't. (Exceedingly unlikely.) 2) You complained about safety and they fired you in retaliation. 3) They fired you for your race, age or gender.
Since most companies employee people "at-will", they can essentially fire you for any damn reason they want, as long as you aren't a whistle-blower and as long as their reasons aren't discriminatory in specific ways.
The cake is a pie
Actually, I once contacted the department of labor on this to see if I was exempt, they referred me to my local columbus whose a ma call it. Long story short, that exemption only affects hourly individuals. If you are salaried, you are exempt from being payed overtime for an entirely different reason, provided you are a professional making more than $250 per week (I think it was 250). I think when that exemption was written, there might have been some debate over whether or not all/which IT workers were professionals, which could be part of the reason behind the exemption.
Getting back on topic, the experience that lead me to contact the DOL was similar to that of the guy in question. My team was tasked with completing a project in an unreasonable timeframe. With months to go, we were told we had to put in 60+ hour weeks. This went on for about 10-12 weeks. There was a stretch where I worked something like 30 days in a row with just one day off. Productivity dropped sharply in those conditions and most everyone was talking about leaving (H1B's and all). After the project was finished, we were treated to strict 40 hour work weeks, and we had the appreciation and respect of most of the people in the company.
However, our graphics designer quit (with no job lined up), our development manager quit as soon as he could find another job, I (developer) just quit after getting another job, and the dust hasn't settled yet. We had a 9 member MIS department that they were planning on growing to 11 this year and now we^H^H they are down to 6, and a few others could still go. It probably would have been a lot worse had 3 of the remaining 6 not been H1Bs.
My advise to the poster would be, if you like your job and your management stick it out. If you don't and you have enough money to go it alone for a while, work a 40 hr week and see if they fire you (if you quit, you can't collect unemployment). If you can't afford to go it alone for a while, buckle down because unless you've got some good connections, you are going to be stuck at your job for a while. One thing I quickly discovered was that it is almost impossible to conduct a good strong job search while working 60-70 hours per week.
If you want to try to reason with your management you might want to try to illustrate to them just how unreasonable those hours are. For example, if you are a rookie making 45,000/yr that boils down to $865/week. Now imagine you are a sophomore intern in college making $12/hr. If you work 60 hours a week, you will make $840/week (12*40 + 18*20). Of course there's benefits and a higher stable paycheck, but it's downright insulting to say that a bachelor's degree and year or two of experience is only worth an extra $25/week.
A former employer pulled a similar stunt on a friend in a different department (5+ hours per week unpaid overtime). He quietly logged his hours on a daily basis with a brief description of what he did. After two years of this he quit (better job) and filed a law suit againt them. IIRC he just had to go to the state labor board and they got him his back pay and fined the company.
IMO I'd do the same. Mention once that you don't agree with unpaid overtime and log your work activities. BTW, judges/lawyers love to see hand written logs. Also check with your state's labor relations board. I wouldn't do anything big until you start work for someone else.
On a side note: where does it stop? Is the next step to start working programers (et al) like MD residents (70 - 80 hours per week, sometimes 36 hours straight). How many hours over 40 per week is too much?
Good Luck.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Wrongful termination is possible in any state
... Which means if there isn't a law specifically against forcing a salaried employee to work more than reasonable hours for weeks on end, with no compensation, the company can fire the employee for not doing so. The employee will almost certainly be granted unemployment even if the company fights it, but that's the extent of the protection the state offers against generic "unfairness."
I *did* mention the Title VII exemptions, which would cover the first two examples.
But yes, as I understand it it's legal to fire someone because you decide they're ugly and stupid, as long as you're doing it on an individual basis and not making a pattern of deciding that sort of thing about members of a protected class (Title VII again). They might have grounds for slander charges, or even assault if you phrase it wrong, but that's a side issue.
I'm not a lawyer, but I had grounds to consult one. Two, actually. The first lawyer I spoke to was one I knew of who normally handled the corporation's side of the case, and who I trusted to refer me to someone who wasn't an ambulance-chaser to handle an employee's side of the case. He flipped through the employee's handbook, which the company owner had written without benefit of counsel. There's nothing quite as interesting as having a lawyer shaking his head and muttering "Oh, shit. Oh, *shit*." very quietly under his breath. I'm not sure he was aware he was doing it.
At any rate, one thing that stuck with me was when he pointed out that the company owner stated that part of the company mission statement was "to treat employees fairly." He said he'd never advise a company to put that in... because Kansas law does not require a company to treat its employees fairly. It merely requires a company to treat its employees in accordance with the law.
All that said, I do suspect there's Wage & Hour restrictions on extreme hours, but sararimen get much less protection than the hourly guys, so I dunno. Never have had to find out, fortunately.
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