Slashdot Mirror
IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules
bjarvis354 writes "The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting that the Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao unveiled new rules that seem to specifically target IT workers and other white collar workers for exemption from overtime pay. The Oneonta Daily Star claims that 'According to new exemption tests, the employee isn't guaranteed overtime pay if primary duties involve office or non-manual work,' and 'Computer employees are not guaranteed overtime pay if they make $455 a week, or if their hourly rate is $27.63. Affected employees include computer systems analysts, programmers, software engineers or anyone with a similar title.'"
If this figure isn't the take home pay amount, it looks like it would be a good idea (perhaps even a necessity) to get a second job. Ouch. Good luck to all you IT people.
C:\>
I don't see how this changes anything? Most IT workers never got overtime, of course we have very flexible schedules so its a good tradeoff I suppose.
Don't do it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
You mean we were supposed to be getting overtime before? I don't ever remember getting paid overtime in the last ten years.
Workers may still get overtime pay if they earn between $23,660 and $100,000 and work more than 40 hours per week.
I don't want to hear any complaints if your making over 100k a year. If your making less thank 23,660 a year I'm confused too.
The solution is to not work the overtime, companies with servers and work machines down will be suprisingly responsive to "bonuses".
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
I could be wrong, but I was first in IT back in 1996, and this was the case back then (In NC). This is most definitely not news to me. I was in IT for almost 7 years, and I never got paid a dime of overtime (but the hourly rates I was getting paid were already obscene).
What about video game testing? That sounds white collar...
You mean we were supposed to get overtime pay BEFORE they passed this law?
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Boy, am I glad I don't make $27.63 an hour.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
For all the difficulty and struggle that comes with it, it's a good time to be a contractor or self-employed.
They (some dept. in the govmn't) also put out a press-release type thing months ago instructing employers how to avoid overtime pay under general circumstances. Maybe someone could help me out and dig it up...
Your government, always fighting for the little guy instead of big business. Gotta love it.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
"Affected employees include computer systems analysts, programmers, software engineers or anyone with a similar title."
Admittedly, I didn't RTFA, but that statements just SCREAMS for pointy-hairs to change the job titles of the people who they don't want to have to pay for overtime.
Can you tell that I lived in Oneonta for a while?
J
'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
That does it. IT jobs suck. Let's outsource them all!
Seems to me that most blue-collar workers put down their tools at the end of the day and walk away from the work.
Seems to me that most blue-collar workers damn well do get paid for their overtime, and if the boss doesn't want to pony up the bucks, he can do the work himself.
Seems to me that most professional blue-collar workers, like plumbers and carpenters and such, make upwards of six-figure incomes.
Maybe I'm wrong.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Where did they get the $455 weekly and $27.63 hourly figures from? If you are getting paid $27.63 an hour, chances are you are clearing that $455 easily and if you are making $455 (after tax) weekly you are getting paid about $13-14 bucks an hour.
~S
and any other 3rd world country.
Oh yeah, thats that "time and a half" thing I use to get before I was salaried.
I've been salaried so long now, I stopped lamenting paid overtime ages ago. Unfortunately, this means my wife's already meager paycheck is gonna get leaner.
Great.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
God, that such a wrong headline. RTFA.
On NPR yesterday it was reported that only about 100,000 people would be affected by the new changes. If IT folks aren't eligible then that reported number is much too low.
This sucks. I think that if you get an hourly wage you should get overtime pay, regardless of any other factors, if you work overtime.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
new rules that seem to specifically target IT workers and other white collar workers for exemption from overtime pay.
That "new" rule is as old as IT : if you do your legal 40 hours per week in an IT company, you're out of here faster than you can say "antidisestablishmentarianism".
In the last company I worked for, a minimum of 60 hours per week was expected, sort of like an unwritten rule, often a lot more during death marches. I was well paid of course, and bonuses were huge, but in reality I had a really shitty hourly wage.
So what's new here? just that it's now a written rule that IT workers are slave workers. The only thing this does is diminish even further the impression of "privileged workers" non-IT folks have of us, and that's too bad because that's about the only glamour of the job.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Aren't there laws about employers making employees work for no pay? The word slavery comes to mind...I don't care if its not manual labor, its still labor.
The article says: "Chao said about 107,000 white-collar workers earning $100,000 or more a year could lose their eligibility."
People in that salary bracket are being paid hourly? I had always assumed that anywhere in the 50+ per year range is a salaried position, and overtime isn't an issue anyway, because you don't keep a time clock.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
I know who is'nt working over time anymore...
Another astounding success in the Bush Administration's No Billionaire Left Behind program.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
That's a totally stupid rule. So now all us Geeks not only have to be chained to the desk for 18 hours a day, we don't get the compensation for it? You try it, damned politicians!!! Thankfully, I am Canadian and any journey south would be under contract stipulating that overtime hours are paid at double-time. Just so you know, that contract re-negotiation can give you some leverage to get what you want, and that even if the law says one thing, you can still negotiate yourself out of these kinds of compensation ruts. Don't take no for an answer. Unionize and strike, need be.
I'm on salary. Which means I'm on-call 24/7, expected to do overtime if needed, and can be fired at any time for any reason.
If I'm working as an hourly employee, I'm going to bill my boss for every hour I spend working. At my full rate. If I'm lucky, maybe they'll agree to pay me time and a half for anything over 40 hours (or some other predetermined limit).
They can't make me work overtime hours and not pay me, unless I'm salary. Then I wouldn't expect it anyway.
On the other hand, the overtime rules were never really meant to apply to people like programmers, so it's really just codifying that. Overtime was put in place to compenstate manual labourers, and low wage employees.
Which explicitly states that IT workers making less than $83,000 anually must be paid overtime?
This was signed into (California) law in 2000, I believe.
SB 88
From the bill:
This bill, except as specified, would exempt a professional employee in the computer software field from this overtime compensation requirement if the employee is primarily engaged in work that is intellectual or creative, the employee's hourly rate of pay is not less than $41.00, and the employee meets other requirements.
Once again, typically for Slashdot, the headline is very inaccurate. It's not that IT workers aren't eligible for overtime pay, it's just that it's no longer guaranteed. If your employer wants to pay you overtime, that's still their prerogative, not to mention a good idea for retention. Believe, there are folks out there earning overtime for IT work that this will not affect at all.
This is not news to me as a software developer. Only infrastructure people seem to enjoy overtime pay benefits.
HAD
So now they've just legitimatized what was practiced all along. (Well I'm not saying everybody did, but now even the nice guys will convert everyone to salaried to save money).
It applies to me although I rarely qualify for overtime. Since I know this won't have any effect on the loss of said jobs overseas, I don't see how it's even necessary.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
When it all starts falling down, maybe they will understand what overtime is and how valuable IT people are.
Maybe they'll outsource their internal IT dept's too. hehehe
Strike is a good word.
Organize is a better one.
Who better to organize than IT people.
Don't be fooled by slogans,
when you're treated as group (and so badly)
act as group.
$455 a week is $23,660 yearly.
$27.63 an hour is $57,470 yearly, which is already close to Federal overtime exemption (if not hitting it exactly, I don't recall the current figure).
So, why the $34,000 discrepancy?
...well, perhaps not all of Canada, but I have been in IT now for 6 years and never once have received any overtime.
My current job has the best "overtime" policy that I've had thus far, in that lieu time off is calculated on overtime hours * 1.5. So we get time and a half OFF for the time we work. Not bad. Gives me at *least* one day off every 3 weeks.
So I have more time off, and no extra income to fork over to the gov't to misappropriate.
News at 11. That's why this year I'm going to vote with my... vote... for a regime that's more in line with my goals.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
These right wing freaks are hostile to modernity itself. Overtime was progress 70 years ago, now they want to go back. They are extremists who must be stopped.
As a "white collar worker" (Pharmacist), I think its a really really bad idea.. :)
We're already overworked, and now they want us to work overtime without pay? Writing some sloppy code after working an 8 hour day is bad, but making a mistake and killing someone is far worse...
Now the excessive hourly rate of overtime wont be a factor in deciding if im to work 10-12 hour days or not... Time to move to russia!
"Organize is a better one."
Not in the US, where most union members are forced into unions against their will.
And people wonder why Indian outsourcing is getting so popular.
--
In other news, the Department of Labor is experiencing strange outages with their network, website, and all IT related systems.
PHB: Mr. Frennzy, we'd like to offer you employment. Your base wage will be $27.65 per hour.
Me: No WAY man! I won't take a penny over $27.62 per hour.
Thankfully, it's not an issue if you're self-employed.
...IT Unions or guilds that combat this type of crap. I'm not a commie or a teamster, by why no worker rights for white collar workers? Oh and my job ain't all that white collar some days.
Wouldn't most IT workers be salaried anyway? I've always been.
The upside is: Where I work, if we work a single hour a day and have to take off (sick, dr appt., etc) we get paid for 8 hours regardless.
Plus, I can work the single hour remotely if needed.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
I repeat, the overtime rules were reworked at the last minute!
The Bush administration on Tuesday pulled back from a planned overhaul of the nation's overtime rules, allowing more white-collar workers -- including those earning as much as $100,000 a year -- to continue collecting premium pay if they log more than 40 hours a week.
From The Oregonian
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
You guys were getting overtime?
In my entire career in IT, I have NEVER been paid overtime. 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week, weekends, nights, whatever.
Was I supposed to?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
nothing will change if the persons in government don't.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I've worked for 17 years in the IT field, and all but three of those years have been as a "salaried" employee.
If I am "salaried", why do I have to fill out a timesheet? Why, when I only have 38 hours on my timesheet, do I get paid for 38 hours? Conversely, when I have 68 hour, I only get paid for 40?
I've brought this up as "illegal" on a couple occasions, and even cited the state's labour laws, only to have it thrown back at me.
THIS is where we need to make some reforms too...
They don't pay overtime and haven't in a while. Sometimes I do 5 or 10 hours over 40 but I'm salaried so I just take it as part of the job.
Also, if I do something really heroic, I usually get some kind of merit-based bonus. $200 or $300.
Perhaps I work as a company who spoils me but I'm not troubled too much by not getting overtime. If I thought I was being taken advantage of though, I'd start hitting the monster boards.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Salaried, AKA Exempt Employees, are exempt from overtime pay. If you have a contract for $60K per year and no other stipulations you should not expect additional pay for working over 40hours per week.
Employees that are on an Hourly wage get paid hourly. This new law is saying that if your wage is over this $20 mark, you do not have a right to earn time and a half, but you will still get paid on your hourly wage. If you work 60 hours you get paid for 60, not 70 (40 + 20 + (20/2))
Companies are required to have no more than 50% staff on Exempt status (ratio may change from state to state)
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
Because by the time the CEOs are finished, there will be less than 100,000 IT workers in the US.
With all that limo surfing, Aeron chair purchasing, job hunting on company time, and bragging about how rich everyone deserved to be.
Now not only are IT workers fired, but threatened with third world wages and no overtime pay should they ever return.
Seriously, I don't mean to troll, but what did we expect? For a brief, glowing moment there, IT workers were treating money like it was only paper.
The same thing happened to coal miners (the technical gurus of their day) decades ago. At least they had union protection.
People get payed for working extra hours? Sounds like utopia. It's just assumed I will wake up at 4 AM to make a system change.
Your employer can only make you work your contracted hours. If they want more they either have to pay (or more normally) offer you more work flexibility. Ie. Your there all night, fine go home don't bother about today. I can't rember the last time I had to take time off to get a delivery at home, because I have always been allowed to "Work from home" that day. Even though it wasn't that productive when you thing about it. Mandating overtime would require more hours tracking which will end up in the loss of flexibility because its easier to make sure people work 9-5. If they are not in the office they arn't putting in the hours, and if they don't all leave at the same time, that person is going to do an overtime claim....
Personally I have only ever been payed overtime for on call work, and I would not expect it any other way.
James
I was hoping this meant an end to overtime, but instead it is an end to overtime PAY (whatever that is).
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
My hourly is $27.06 right now! Yay! (wipes sweat from forehead and places checkmark next to Bush/Cheney on the ballot)
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
They're typically NOT salaried- which means hourly pay. However, the law usually wasn't followed anyhow- most IT contractors and consultants don't get overtime pay, just flat pay for hours worked.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
What I don't get is how this is all related to the *Fair* Labor Standards Act of 1936. To whom is this fair?
I work full time as a software developer in Ohio, and this figure is roughly what I make. This has been fine for me, in a low cost-of-living area. When I see all the much higher figures thrown around at Slashdot, (and sites like monster.com) I am just amazed.
I think this is good.
Professionals should get paid to do a job.
Compensation should depend on the individual situation, not on some blanket rule.
If you are paid hourly, overtime should be paid.
If you are salary, you don't get overtime.
I would think that most non entry level white collar jobs should be leaning towards the salary job. There is a certain level of self supervision required at that point. If you are self supervising your daily activities the hours you work should be your own responsiblity.
I for one welcome our new non-overtime-paying overlords.
My employer (a medium size insurance company)
Is currently being sued by the claims analysts, saying they are not exempt employees and should be paid on an hourly basis (including overtime).
Depending on how this case works out, it could have a ripple effect throughout the country.
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
Lots of techies, a surprising number, are on the right side of the political spectrum. The very idea of any kind of labor organization was abhorrent. I think a lot of this is because until recently we've lived cushy lives.
Now there's a hard-hitting new pimp in town and things aren't quite so nice.
How much more of this FUCKED UP REPUGNANT SHIT is it going to take before people wake up? We're the ones who run the machinery here during this all-important war effort. What are they going to do if we won't work, for free, conscript us?
Uh... Don't answer that.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Yeah, um... were going to need you here this Saturday... and oh yeah... Sunday too.
I can see this as a great opportunity for tech sweatshops to own their employees free time. My guess is the federal gov't wants to get out of paying contractors overtime fees?
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/29/213.html
Read (a), then skip to (17) and read that chunk. The "Maximum hour requirement" is defined in section 207, if it's not obvious what it's talking about.
Maybe there's an opportunity here to get our lives in order. As some have already posted, if you don't get overtime pay for overtime work, then don't do it. Well, let's ask ourselves why there was a need to work overtime in the first place. Maybe it's time to slow things down to a pace where all of this overtime in not needed in the first place.
;-) We may not get richer, but we will be happier. And if the boss man don't like it, screw him! He's gonna lay you off eventually anyway, so why sacrifice your life for him?
The bosses in the corporate offices cannot have it both ways. If they want insanely high productivity, they are going to have to pay for it. Even workers in India will eventually cost as much as here for the same work output. So let's stop this madness and live our lives like human beings instead of 24/7 machines. Let's spend more time with our friends and family. Or perhaps more time actually getting friends and family!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Capitalism is a positive sum game. While I certainly disagree with that statement, in this case it makes sense. When Unions fight for extra rights, then employers who are unecessarily hoarding all that cash are forced to give some of it away. This helps out everyone in the economy (except for a very small, very wealthy group). Unions are positive sum. When a Union struggles and wins extra rights, all workers benefit. The idea that somehow by forcing employers to take care of their employees and pay them a living wage will destory the market is ridiculous. We all benefit when society consists of people that are paid well, healthy, and happy. Perhaps you would like to go back to the early 20th century when children were worked 14+ hour days, and people were treated like machines (oh, wait, that second one hasn't changed much). If it weren't for Unions, chances are that you would be working a miserable, low wage job, and the country would be entirely in the pockets of the rich by now. You have quite a bit to be grateful for, it's too bad that you don't realize it.
For the jobs that this does affect, I wonder if it's somewhat of a blessing in disguise. Yeah, those workers won't be getting OT pay, but at least they're job hasn't been shipped overseas yet. Thus companies considering such moves can at least chalk up lack of OT pay as a plus for keeping jobs in the US....or at the very least it negates that advantage that might have been held by other countries.
this has been happening for years...last time i got paid overtime, i was working at a liquorstore doing inventory i havent seen a penny for any of my overtime hours since working in IT
This has been on the books in Alberta since Y2K became an issue. According to Alberta labour laws we are treated like "essential services" (police, fire dept, etc) and aren't elligable for OT compensation. Now, that's not to say that many IT companies in Alberta don't do this, it just means that they aren't legally obligated to do so.
I don't even want the money really, I'd just be content with time in lieu. If a project was worth sacrificing my time it should be worth some kind of compensation (or maybe my perception of how important a project is compared to my life will change next time).
crazy dynamite monkey
Yes it will, because a "living wage" is an arbitrary concept that has nothing to do with the value of the work. If you muck with wages this way, you are telling the company to do all it can to make do with fewer workers, or get out entirely. Let the market determine the wage, not meddling Washington bureaucrats.
That's it, I'm quitting IT and going into politics. I figure I can make more from corporate "campaign contributions" than any salary I would draw.
I guess we've got our answer for this guy. Cliff, don't take a penny more than $27.62 an hou, then work a 90 hour work week.
I'm safe ... I don't have a title like that. Mine is usually "Hey, the Internet is down"
vodka, straight up, thank you!
"The exemption for employees in computer occupations does not include employees engaged in the operation of computers or in the manufacture, repair or maintenance of computer hardware and related equipment."
Systems Administrators are still non-exempt. Programmers with 'high skill level' are not.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Why OT granted only for Manual labor?
If I work over time, chances are, that overtime is spent staring at a computer screen. I didn't need glasses until last year. I worked a lot of overtime last year.
Why didn't they take away overtime for blue collar workers too?
Simple, blue collar workers are smart enough to set up unions to protect their interests.
In case you didn't notice there is some serious class war getting wages on IT workers but they don't care! They all have this "I'm too smart and skillz0red and special for it to happen to me! I'm different than those other saps!". With an attitude like that it's hard to really be upset about it although I will always be mad when I see workers getting the shaft but the attitude some of these primodanna assholes have makes it really hard to care sometimes...
But the result is an obcene over-valuation of the cost of their labor. I can see *skilled* workers getting paid for the academic and technical accumen they bring to the table, but by comparison, do you think that dock workers should me making the same amount? What about people working in an auto assembly plant, where more and more of the assembly process is automated? I'd argue that these people get paid FAR more than the market value of their contribution, but that's what unions do- they may help the "little guy," but they also result in artificially induced market imbalances that add quite a bit to the cost of products and services.
Nice troll.
However, I'm amused at right-wing attempts to "let the market decide", except when it comes to TV & Radio censorship, abortion.
Does it hurt your neck to flip-flop so rapidly?
See Techs Unite.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
From Misleader.org
In a move designed to blur the issue, the Administration today said it was revising its previous effort to terminate overtime protections for 8 million workers. But even by the Bush Administration's own admission, the "new" regulations will mean that tens of thousands of lower-income workers will be cut off. Opponents of the Administration's plan say that the revisions would still cause problems for mean millions. The regulations are so bad for workers that some state legislatures have even rushed through legislation to block them.
If the intention was to make sure that only those that make more money than most would lose overtime pay, then they would have the cap set as a fixed percentile -- say, everyone who is in the 90th percentile for income.
As it is, the real cap is lowered every year by default. Now why would Bush and his corporate friends prefer a cap that creeps lower every year vs. one that remains fixed?
And when will we stand up for ourselves?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
In BC, the former leftist government introduced
a zero over-time policy for technology workers.
What this means is that if you work in BC in a
technology capacity, you are not paid for overtime.
Companies like Electronic Arts, who have a massive
game studio in Vancouver, lobbied hard for the
legislation that is viewed as grossly unfair by
workers, while providing a nice bonus for employers
keen to provide cheap outsourced labour for
American companies.
yay?
That means you, yes you Joe Wilson are no longer eligable for overtime. People who charge whole dollar amounts and don't compute their bills to the nearest penny are not affected.
As many have observed, these rules will likely change little in the workforce and will merely codify what is existing practice (although only time will tell). One of the primary stated motives for the new rules was to update 50 year old Department of Labor rules that made it very difficult to determine exactly who was and was not eligible for overtime because the rules referred to positions that for the most part don't exist anymore (e.g. straw men and keypunch operators).
To put a really cynical spin on these new rules, I believe that one of the groups that will be hit hardest by overtime rules with bright line requirements will be the employment law plaintiffs bar, which will be hindered in its efforts to troll for new highly profitable cases by representing highly compensated former employees who could conceivably still be eligible for overtime under the old rules Representing low-hourly wage employees isn't that huge a business because employee will often settle for some minimal amount that they need just to survice and which employers will often be willing to pay to avoid a trial - and a potential award of attorneys fees if the employee wins.
I never understand how negatively so many people view unions. This is exactly why individuals have to join together to protect themselves. If one worker objects to unfair labour practices the boss can choose to ingnore him or fire him. If the IT workers of America refuse to work under unfair conditions then ...
1. Their jobs go offshore more quickly (maybe);
or,
2. The PHBs relocate to right-to-bugger-workers states (perhaps);
or,
3. The PHB negotiates, a compromise is reached and, while nobody gets to declare victory, a truce can be arranged (sadly less likely than ever before due to workers neglect of the need to protect their own).
Obviously the demonization of unions by owners that has somehow been sold to credulous workers makes #3 unlikely in most of the Unscupulous States of America.
Until electors figure out which side their shrinking bread is buttered on (repeat after me: my interests are not the same as those of the rich) and that they actually have the power to change things (though picking a Dem over a Rep doesn't change much) then you can all just bend over (unless you are rich, in which case -- fsck at will).
when did this change from slashdot to socialistdot? maybe it'd been for awhile and I missed it ...
I ain't working overtime.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
when it rains, it pours hot oil in the silicon valley.
so much for my objective of becoming a code-monkey...now I have to become the next bill gates to make a decent living.
Besides, don't they know that this is a bad idea?
Workers who get more pay, subsequentially pay more taxes. That's Taxes 101.
Well, good to see this won't affect me.
Don't mod this funny; I'm not kidding... not even close.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
WashTech is the union for computer professionals.
I've written all of them and the only one to get back to me
Kay Bailey Hutchison (sp?)
Basically said that taking my money away and giving it to the poor is her choice in the matter of this.
Her opinion of those of us that worked hard for good paying jobs will now have to settle for less and make do when obviously what our money is going to will no doubt come down in price just makes my life that much harder.
And no doubt I wont be voting for her next election.
I don't know of any software engineering/ IT jobs that pay overtime now. Usually these jobs are salaried - no OT.
How many people in this field get paid for overtime?
The revolutionary physician who supervised America's first public asylum.
A novelist in the first half of the 19th century.
Yes, there were two.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Make sure that your hourly pay != $27.63. Then I can collect OT when I am at 100/hour.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well During Clinton's reign, anyone with computer in their job description were NOT covered by the Dept of Labor regs, but were covered under the dept of commerce!
So this is not a new issue, but a continuation of the same standings.
I was beat out of overtime on Labor Day weekend of al times.
So quit your fucking liberal bedwetting and deal with it.
You're a real fucking idiot aren't you. Damn.
they really use, we're all safe. I'm not a "Computer Employee," I'm a human employee that works with computers. I don't care what the Computer Employees get - probably WinXP if they're naughty.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
it should not be so arbitrary, but overtime should stay in place to guarantee quality of life for the workforce. Otherwise the country would be full of IT sweatshops.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
And don't try to tell me IT is anything like a sweatshop, no matter how much overtime you have, or how stupid the users you support are, how often the computers crash, or how hard it is to find a job. We have big asses and soft hands, and anyone who thinks it is like 19th century meatpacking, is a complete pussy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
My father-in-law is an old school blue collar worker, on the production line at Ford (now Jaguar) in the UK. At a very rough estimate he probably pulls $40k per year, including shift allowances and bonuses, including regular night shifts.
Two things strike me about his job. First, those kinds of jobs are getting more and more rare these days. People born in the 1940s and 50s had it good. The second thing is, he has done that job for over 20 years. I would not have stood it that long, even on such good money. He gets paid partly for his company specific skills, but I guess mainly because the job is so crap, why else would you do it?
Do I hear anybody laughing at the call for organisation of IT-workers in Unions? When everybody declares that unions are a thing of the past, well the real screwing can begin...
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
One has to ask why IT workers don't form a union or if they don't like the idea of a union, at least a Professional Organisation like doctors and lawyers have to fight for their rights? Right now, the only IT lobby groups represent your employers ie. the big IT companies. Remember, government doesn't hear anyone who doesn't have a big enough lobby group. Government is a matter of give and take between different interest groups and since there's a finite money to go around (yes, even with the heavy government debt) if you're not one of the winners, you're one of the losers. It was fine to be free-wheelers during the dot-com boom, but now in the down-turn you need to really have an organised voice.
Just because the law no longer mandates 1.5 overtime pay for certain jobs does not mean that you cannot request it in your contract.
If you are about to accept a job offer and they do not pay 1.5 for overtime, ask for it. If they refuse, suck it up or find another job. You don't need the government to mandate that they pay 1.5.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Sound familiar? I think a lot of IT workers probably feel this is them.
But look at where unions are today. Do we want IT to look like that in 20 years? Do we want to encourage people to stay in some go-nowhere job getting paid twice as much as their non-union counterparts while doing half the work? Do we want to be going on strike regularly?
I exaggerate, but this is all _part_ of modern unions. We don't even have as much a right to bitch as those blue collar workers did when unions were first formed. I think it's a bad idea.
I've been an "exempt" worker from the day I started in this business, back in 1978. I'm not so sure there's a story here w.r.t. IT.
this exemption from overtime for IT folks making more than $27.6/hr is a current regulation on the books already. Maybe they are talking about its renewal?
p ay /fs17e_computer.htm
v er time.htm
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fair
http://www.staffing.net/employers/contracting_o
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fair
Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provide an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly skilled workers in the computer field
These are the proposed rules to affect computer workers; there was a last minute change, but presumably these are the most up to date rules proposals, as it's straight from the DOL's website. Essentially, unless you make less than $455/week, you don't qualify for overtime if you're a computer worker.
--
$tar -xvf
Yeah, let the pay be for the real value of the work, and let the taxpayers make up for the difference between that and subsistence.
Makes perfect sense.
Not.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
next y2k like bug, we don't put in ANY unpaid overtime.
though at my 40hrs a week job, i could probably log 10hrs/week goofing off on slashdot.
Opposed to the death penalty, are you?
Thought not.
Bye-bye, consistency!
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
There would be none, as this does not mandate locking workers in (or even allow it). If you can't do that, it is not a sweatshop.
5.15 is supposed to be 5.50. Obviously 5.15 is the minimum wage. That still doesn't explain why all the Mexicans don't have jobs right now, same goes for India. History shows that employers won't go out of their way to hire people, even if the price of labor is very low to non-existent. History also shows that if people fight for a higher wage, that everyone prospers, as that extra income is not hoarded, but instead put right back into the system. Working people can't afford to hoard money. Your theory that allowing the market to set the wage will help society has no basis.
The 27.63 rule for computer professionals has been around for a long time. Don't belive me? Check out:0 2.fair .pdf#Page=18
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/statutes/whd/00
(17)99 (in the righthand column) states the 27.63 payrate. I became aware of these rules when I got switched from salary to hourly by my current employer.
Um, yay? :|
Virtual Ditch Digger
Foreman of Javascript
Driver Driver
Mouse Machinist
The first part makes sense. Getting the taxpayers involved in a giveaway is not.
American labor laws don't apply in India.
It had to be said...
I'm not exactly sure where all of the anti-union bias comes from. Screenwriters and actors have a union, and they are also well-paid (most of the time) and creative people.
I also think that the argument that we can negotiate our own contracts is equally naive. Sure, there are some that can, but I wouldn't say that social skills and negotiation are well-known geek skills outside of MMRPGs.
The only disadvantage of unions, as was eluded to earlier was the whole factor of diverse employment. However, that doesn't bar places like MS, Apple, Sun, Adobe, IBM, etc., etc., from joining unions. This doesn't mean people sit on their buts while unions continually strike, but it does mean you have someone negotiating your benefits and work week for you, collectively, as well as a network of peers.
It seems that depending on what news source you read from, IT is and isn't cut off from overtime.
I've read several conflicting news items on different sites that seem to contradict each other.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, IT workers, for all practical purposes, are even exempt from minimum wage. Many jobs are advertised as "internships" that pay $0 and yet require years of experience. Then there are the jobs that are for a certain piece of work for a set, ridiculously low wage. For example, "Design me a web site for $100".
How about blasting a few assumptions from our lazy semi-socialist system:
1) You, not the government, should be responsible to ensure your needs are met.
2) You, not the government, are free to sign or not sign a contract with your employer that will detail compensation.
3) Minimum wages restrict the demand for labor, and creates unemployment.
4) Requirements by the government, such as requiring/not allowing overtime pay, warp the market for labor, and only hurt society.
5) The habit of government to get involved has made most of you convinced that you cannot act on your own, hence the whining BS which always follows such a post. This is about the degradation of our social fabric.
If you think you are not paid enough the solution is quite simple:
1) Change jobs
2) Get an additional job
3) Start your own company
If you can't cut it, go back to your mother's basement.
Passing the buck for reasons of "social equality" will lead to nothing but friction on the progress of society, let alone enters the realm of oppressing liberty, in the rather muddled definition of "social equality".
____
Robotics; Policy; Society:
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
That is not true for all unions. It depends on which one you're in.
According to Section 515.5, 3 (http://www.lalabor.com/main/id/316.html), the new maximum amount earned must be less than $41.00/hour to still earn overtime as a computer professional in California. (Does anybody know if this is hourly only, or does it apply salary as well?) I assume that the local state laws would still apply.
The IT employee will have three options:
- Fall in line with these salary limits
- Give up health and other benefits by working as a contracter
- Start your own business
People who opt for Case 1 are good little workers (they probably aren't organized to make any complaints if these rules are changed or tightened in the future People who opt for option 2 will still have to fight these maximums as the standards and even if bosses are still raked over the coals with high salaries, at least there's a huge cost savings by not having to pay benefits. Right now most people in this category aren't really independent anyway, they have a negotiator/pimp (like EDS, DiData, or others) that look on these rules as setting their profit margins. "Okay, looks like bosses are willing to pay three times the max salary for an Oracle programmer. We'll pay our programmers at just over 25% of the legislated max, and keep the remainder as profit."Case three always an option, but it's likely anyone starting a business is going to be in for some hard free market realities. More than likely they'll be anxious to go back to the legal maxes if their business fails, and try and undercut the legal maxes just to get their business established.
Overall, whatever the numbers are. These organized maximums are a very bad idea if you're a programmer, no matter which political party is touting this idea.
"if you're making $21k/yr or more (which these rules apparently affect) then you're making more that most Americans"
got a link for that ????
I think you actually might be right; but , let's face it, misleading.
$21K/year is not going to feed 3 kids, pay for a mortgage and save for retirement. Especilly in Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, NY or Washington.
I'm sorry you think people that make over $21K/year are "rich". Really sorry.
California passed an overtime law a year or so ago mandating overtime for all hourly workers with few exceptions (it was to please some Nurses union lobby).
For the first time, my employer had to start paying me overtime. It was a HUGE MESS!
I'm am oncall so I get calls at night. But wait, if I already have worked 40 hours that week then I would have to report overtime. Management didn't want that so instead people were being sent home early from work during the week. Played hell with carpools when one of you suddenly has to leave because he is getting too close to 40 hours or got called the night before.
Fortunately California changed its overtime laws to exempt programmers (or people making more than $43/hr from the new law and things are back to normal. But I DONT WANT OVERTIME.
unions artificially inflate salaries, which increases the cost of doing business, which makes overseas labor more appealing. It's not "greedy corporations" that are to blame for outsourcing, especially in the manufacturing sector, it's unions who think some jackass highschool dropout doing the same job a robot or trained monkey could do deserves to make 60K a year and will go on strike if anyone disputes it.
Hank Rearden had it right.. when the union makes a threat to pull all their members out, get it in writing and inform them that per their agreement, you'll never knowingly hire another member of their union again, and if one has gotten in without your knowledge, you'll summarily fire them. Private companies do not owe anything to anyone. They should whatever compensation an employee is willing to work for. And if they're a good company, they'll offer excellent compensation to bring in the best of the best and reward based on merit, not union seniority.
If enough states pass laws mandating overtime for all employees, the new overtime rules could be meaningless in practice.
Do they think this will help the IT sector? Most likely it will cause workers to move elsewhere.
That's where employment laws are heading anyways, or at least from where I've been standing. The days of unions are numbered. Bank on it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
back this one up, buddy.
show us the link.
sure you're not perpetuating a Repbulican Suburban myth?
According to the labour standards act in Canada, your boss HAS to give you time*1.5 BY LAW. If you are not salaried, and you work more than 44 hours per week they HAVE TO PAY time and a half (unless you are seasonal), if they offer time in lieu, IT HAS TO BE time and a half. If they don't, all you do is call the Labour Board, and they will be all over your employer, in a huge, nasty way (fines, suspensions of licenses, etc).
When I was 18 I worked for a sleazy electronics chain (long since out of business), and they paid commission only. For some reason, my commission cheques always got sent to the wrong store, or were for the wrong amounts. When I changed jobs, my manager gave me a personal cheque to cover the owed balance. It of course bounced. I called the Labour Board to get my 500 bucks, and they asked when I worked, for how long etc. They got a hold of the company, and made them fork over 3000 bucks, because they didn't just owe commissions, they also had to pay me minimum wage for every hour that I was at work (I was a kid, I had no idea). Showing that cheque to those stinking pricks was the best.
If anyone knows, how would these new rules affect existing state laws? Would it superceed them or would the state laws remain in effect? I.E. in California, those involved in software development are required to be non-exempt unless they make over approx. $85k/yr or are management. Would these new federal rules override California's law?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Sorry, but you are not entirely correct, at least in California. I won't speak for other states. California, BTW, has its own state overtime laws that will probably remain uneffected by the new federal regulations. In California, you get overtime if you work more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.
Just because you are a "salaried employee" does not mean you are exempt from overtime regulation. Salaried employees have an hourly rate - it's determined by dividing the "salary" by the number of hours worked each week.
Essentially, all employees are subject to overtime rules by default, unless they are categorically exempt. Exempt employees include "professionals" such as lawyers, doctors, etc., and employees whose principal duties are the management and supervision of other employees. There are a number of other exceptions (I seem to recall that truck drivers, for example, are exempt. In California, many employers try to screw employees out of overtime by giving them the title of "manager" or "assistant manager", even though they remain wage slaves.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
You're aware that your language skills are poor, no?
I am a network tech in a unionized company.
I am treated fairly and my pay is very nice. We are slow and need more business. We are not hiring. Our primary target business are union locals but we have a very competitive bill rate of about $100 per hour. www.unionbuiltpc.com
A useful link on Slashdot, to an organization I actually want to join! I'm stunned. Then I started to read about WashTech and I realized...it's a local affiliate in the state of Washington, not in the District of Columbia. So, no good for me. I'm off to pester the CWA about local unions here in Washington, D.C.
US IT workers are now more wage-competitive with their Indian counterparts. Maybe this will slow the flow of outsourcing...slightly..
Ein Kompany, Ein Management, Ein Fuhrer.
Sig Heil: Scumerica - Land of the Free* (* 18+, valid papers, health insurance, some restrictions apply)
That is what happens when you get an ignorant union president who has no vested interest. He got paid either way.
As for underqualified scabs, that is a big lie too. They were very much qualified and indeed nothing happened. Unions are around today to preserve themselves and make a very cushy living for the people who run them. Just drive by any Union President's house... er rather mansion. Careful, the guard dogs may get you. I know, I have a few union presidents living near me. I bet their car is more expensive that most people reading this make a year. They are there to screw you.
Manual labor? No problem, I'll be glad to work an extra 10 hours of pay sitting here thinking about the program I need to write. Want me to move my mouse or type? Sorry, that's manual labor.
"We the people" have power over this. You should only work for a fair employer. If your on salary you should get "Comp Time!" Heck I went to work early today (5:30am) to add some more /tmp space
to one of our Oracle development boxes, I'm going home at 2:00pm today.
If you don't work for a fair employer, leave and
find a fair employer or outsource yourself.
When I worked blue collar, we got 2 15min breaks in an 8 hr shift. Be prepared for people to watch what you're doing with your time a lot more closely if you want overtime pay to do the same job.
Damn right, take your financial state in your own hands and be self-employed. People seem to be trained to 'find a job' when they can just 'make one'.
:-)
Although some people like being the 'eternal victim' of the 'horrible boss'.
Me, I victimize myself!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
That is right. Just drive by any Union Presidents home... er rather Mansion. I know, I have been in a few unions and I have been screwed every time. It is just a way for them to collect money from you legally rather than a "protection" scheme. It is a legalized "protection" scheme - protect their interests that is at your expense. They had a place in the world once upon a time, no more. Laws caught up with what they used to do.
Why deal with power hungry unions and bloated bureaucracy when you can get programmers for cents on the dollar in India. Go ahead and form a union, and listen to the sucking sound of your jobs going overseas.
We are not hiring. I am a network tech that is unionized and I am treated well and the pay is good. www.unionbuiltpc.com is the site and we are slow. The company has a very competitive bill rate (about $100/hr) and we have competitive pricing( even with large companies competing) without gouging or mistreating employees. Buy from this company and vote your dollars. Social change comes from people being aware and from the marketplace.
Politics are great like that, aren't they?
True story.
"Once again, typically for Slashdot, the headline is very inaccurate. It's not that IT workers aren't eligible for overtime pay, it's just that it's no longer guaranteed."
I think the word you're looking for is voluntary. So if the "We have a fiscal responsability" arguments are to be taken at face value? Then workers will voluntarily be paid less than if it was mandated. However why does it need to be mandated? Aren't employers honoring the "I work X, you pay me Y"? Or are they trying to pull a "Walmart", and getting away with getting more work, for less pay?
"If your employer wants to pay you overtime, that's still their prerogative, not to mention a good idea for retention."
I wonder if they'll allow me a lump of coal for my stove? It's dreadfully cold her in winter.
"Believe, there are folks out there earning overtime for IT work that this will not affect at all."
By the grace of God, go I.
Very nice move,
Look forward to delayed releases, lack of motivation, and shitty software.
-- The box said Windows 2000 or better... so I installed Linux
$23,660/year? Then by Bush's new regulations, this basically means that all the IT workers in India can get overtime, while we who are stuck in the US can't.
:)
Heh - Thanks, George! I hope they are all voting for you this year too!
At any rate, Department of Labor would have us believe that its cajoleries enhance performance standards, productivity, and competitiveness. Yeah, right. Does Department of Labor remember the hurt and hate in the eyes of the people it made fun of just so others would like it more? Even if it does, I'm sure it doesn't care, because there's an important difference between me and Department of Labor. Namely, I am willing to die for my cause. Department of Labor, in contrast, is willing to kill for its -- or, if not to kill, at least to supplant one form of injustice with another.
If truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, then our national media is controlled by ophidian nobodies. That's why you probably haven't heard that my cause is to mention a bit about narrow-minded, inane conspiracy theorists such as Department of Labor. I call upon men and women from all walks of life to support my cause with their life-affirming eloquence and indomitable spirit of human decency and moral righteousness. Only then will the whole world realize that Department of Labor's argument that you and I are morally inferior to tendentious hellions is hopelessly flawed and utterly circuitous. As for the lies and exaggerations, Department of Labor is totally versipellous. When it's with plebeians, it warms the cockles of their hearts by remonstrating against blackguardism. But when Department of Labor is safely surrounded by its slaves, it instructs them to substitute rumor and gossip for bona fide evidence. That type of cunning two-sidedness tells us that Department of Labor says that soulless deviants have dramatically lower incidences of cancer, heart attacks, heart disease, and many other illnesses than the rest of us. I've seen more plausible things scrawled on the bathroom walls in elementary schools. I should note that were he alive today, Hideki Tojo would be Department of Labor's most trustworthy ally. I can see Tojo joining forces with Department of Labor to help it do exactly the things it accuses cuckoo despots of doing. Let me try to put this in perspective: Department of Labor's expedients will have consequences -- very serious consequences. And we ought to begin doing something about that. I do not find notions that are revolting, childish, and deluded to be "funny". Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe if I had my druthers, Department of Labor would never have had the opportunity to use every conceivable form of diplomacy, deception, pressure, coercion, bribery, trea
Ten (unordered) Rules for Success:
1. Know your shit. If you're a sysadmin who can't make an Ethernet cable or a programmer who can't build a workstation, you deserve to be at the mercy of others.
2. Know others' shit. You just gonna sit there while the PFY brings down the intranet?
3. Be your word. Every discrepancy between what you say and what you do will be used against you. This does not mean that your word must be intelligible to anyone but you. Make credible threats and follow through.
4. Incompetents must fear you, whether they work above you, with you, or below you.
5. Everyone is your adversary until proven otherwise. This does not mean you should be on the offensive, but you can't let your guard down. Trust no one with your reputation.
6. Take no shit, give shit only when your case is strong. It's hard to implement (4) without giving shit, but your aim had better be true. Sometimes it's better to bide your time.
7. Make no friends in haste. Lunch is ok but never, never go drinking with an incompetent. It just makes it harder to fire them later (*sob* I thought we were friends!).
8. Be humble. The more bad-ass you say you are, the more the probability of us having a drink approaches zero.
9. Carry your own insurance and retirement, even if you are on salary. It's so easy to walk out the door when your benefits are secure, and they know it. Don't forget to negotiate for extra compensation!
10. Punctuality. Some deserve it, some don't. Learn the difference.
Screenwriters are stupid and need protection. They don't compare to an IT guy. Heck, my kids often come up with better ideas then they do. The screen writers that are worth a damn aren't unionized or join the union because they are lefty puke liberals (who are also stupid). I have been a member of a number of unions and got screwed big time every time. Don't let them lie to you, because they will. How can you tell? They are talking to you. Without any conscience or concern. As long as you pay their tribute they will be happy, otherwise they come after you.
And like everything else in this govenment, no one know exactly what the fuck is going on at any given moment.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
See. That's something he made up.
Wake up!
Usually when I find confilcting stories like this I assume the worst is true. And I am seldom suprised later when the truth of it goes into real world effect.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
What ever happened to the right to enter into a contract?
If I don't like what I'm paid, I find a new job. Why does the government have to force someone to pay me more than I'm obviously worth?
To all of those who want to complain about these overtime rules: If you want to make jobs more exciting, please don't complain about outsourcing. Pick one or the either to complain about. Then stop complaining.
I call bullshit on this one:
Bolding mine.
Note that nowhere in the editorial does that idiot quote anybody saying that those with incomes above the median are necessarily rich.
In fact, Kerry, among other Democrats, has taken great pains to point out that he favors a tax increase on only those household who take home more than $200K a year. Which, by any objective measure, is stinking fucking rich.
That entire editorial is full of shit, and if that's all the evidence you got, so are you.
hang brain.
Here is a quote from Title 29 USC Chapter 8 Section 213 paragraph 17 on people exempt from overtime:
We are not hiring. I am a network tech at the company www.unionbuiltpc.com and I am treated and paid well. We are slow and need more business. Our target customers are unions but we have a very competitive bill rate(about $100/hr) and computer prices (competitive with bit outsourcing companies). Buy from this company and vote for social change with your dollars. We don't have any dis-satisfied customers. Please post if you are a customer and are dissatisfied. Tell others about us as we are slow.
As far as I know, I've always been classified as "professional labor" and thus exempted from overtime in every job I've held since the end of college in IT... This is in California.
Hardly anything new.
Does this mean some of you out there WERE actually getting overtime?
For all the talk about "aged" brains and the like the professor didn't mention that _most_ consultants are older (30s - 50s) and presumably are hired for their skills...
When do I get my wings so I can "Fly, my pretty's, fly, bwaahahahahaha".
That and the fact that the fez hat is kewl!
feloneous
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
You as an employee do not have the fiscal resources as a company does as the employer, so the negotiation is not an equal one.
If I was selling apples to you a $1000 a peice and you were starving, you do not have "the freedom" to go find apples somewhere else. (Well, you do, but we as a society aren't willing to accept that as reasonable.)
I thought this was established back in the 19th century... apparently, you Americans are still learning.
but I would consider myself a custodian
We are not hiring. Business is slow. We have competitive billing ($100/hr) and pricing (competitive with big companies). We need more business. I am a network tech and I am treated well and paid decent. www.unionbuiltpc.com . Vote your dollars and social change will happen.
My gross pay is 6 figures, but after deductions my AGI is around 32,000. So, the table you're looking at has nothing to do with salary.
Forget the idea of a "cushy" corporate job and get the freedom of being an independant consultant. It's more work, but you don't have to dick with the "rules" of being someone else's endentured serva... employee.
It's no walk in the park to get started, but if you have a grain of talent, common sense and some people skills, you'll never be out of work, nor underpaid.
===--===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
- if i don't like an employer's terms (such as benefits, overtime pay, etc.), i won't work for that employer... - and if that employer does a 'change up' on original terms of employment, then i am free to seek employment elsewhere... - i'd only worry if a law were enacted stating that i must remain employed with a certain employer - but i think we've come a few years down the road from that mentality, haven't we?
We are not hiring. Business is slow. I am a network tech for this company www.unionbuiltpc.com and I am treated well and paid decent. We have a competitive bill rate of about $100/hr and our pc prices are competitive with big comanies. Both line workers and management are unionized in separate unions and this works so no one sells out. Vote your dollars for social change. We may be the only such company.
Tell people about this company as we need the business.
Although Unions say they are there to protect the workers and they do to some extent but they can also hinder them as well. A Union Collects Dues from the workers. Now the more Workers they have the more Dues they get and the more money they make. Now lets say there is a company needs to lay off some people. Say you who are the programmer that can program 3 times faster then any one there and 2 slobs that can get the job done but at a below normal rate but they get the half pay you do. Now logically it will be better for the company and yourself if the 2 slobs were laid off, because you are far more productive then those 2 combined. But as the Union Sees it you are paying them 1 set of Dues each week and the slobs are paying 2 sets of Dues, so when it comes to who the Union will want to layoff well its gonna be you. They will rationalize it as it is better to layoff one person then 2 because it is more humane, but it is truly unfair for the better person to get laid off. Unions tend to keep workers at a mediocre level. While it prevents people from getting paid to low. It also stops them from getting high wages as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Most 'professional' or 'management' classificaitons are normally exempt by default anyway..
So now its on 'official' paper.. so this is news?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How is this any different from the overtime laws that Bush managed to push through? Or is this the same law set just reworded? The actual new laws do a lot more than just hurt IT workers. Although some of this has apparently been ammended, the original proposal exempted anyone with a college degree, nurses, police, etc. This is a bad law.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
We are not hiring. I am a network tech at this company and they treat me well and the pay is decent. Business is slow. We have a competitive bill rate of about $100/hr and pc prices competitive with big companies. Vote your dollars for social change. Outsourcing not allowed. Both management and line workers unionized separately pevents selling out. Tell others about this company as they/we need the work.
While I don't disagree with everything you've said, I have issues with at least half:
Remember, the US is a country where 90% of the population consider themselves middle class and yet 50% are below the poverty line.
Where did you get these statistics from ? And at what dollar point exactly is the poverty line ? It sounds like you're pulling stats out of thin air to make your point.
You know the reason why Europe went 'socialist'? (though I'd better point out that social democracy is far from being socialism) The laissez-faire experiment of the 19th and early 20th centuries failed.
Again, failed by whose definition? I assume you're talking solelyabout Europe here, although I have doubts.You have to keep in mind that Europe was not and still isn't united, at least not at all like the US. Two world wars might have had something to do with it too.
What people forget is that government is there to protect those who can't protect themselves. It's not a tool of business, but a counterweight to balance it's excesses.
Government was around long before anything that remotely ressembled the current business model evolved. Back when peasants were trading and bartering oxen for loaves of bread or beanstalk seeds, governments were around to tax, oppress,punish, enforce laws, and take land from it's people as well as from people outside their established borders. If anything, history has shown that governments, more so than businesses, abuse and exploit people. But not all governments, naturally, just as not all businesses are crooked.
Anytime you get into broad generalizations you're stepping into a troublesome area.
We don't have laws to prevent you and I from commiting crime.
Yes we do. That's exactly the point of laws. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Not only that, but many laws are subjective. Some are just plain wrong. Some are even repealed.
We should not fall victim to the mindset that "Corporations are Evil, Government is Good". Human nature is what it is, some are good, some are bad, most are somewhere in-between.
But I would agree that the two form something of a system of checks and balances in today's times.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This coming from the same guys that wanted to classify ketchup as a "vegetable" on school lunches! (Well, Regean & co.)
I work with a number of people who are much older than I am. I'm 30, and I work with engineers in the range of 28 to 55. Management has people in their 40's, 50's, and 60's.
We have had people in management and engineering who weren't flexible. Hard times pretty much made those people go away due to layoffs.
Those people who are left are plenty flexible. We have one 54 year old who is a runner. He's healthy as a horse and quick. We have another 51 year old who recently made an easy transition from test engineering (a stepping-stone position) to driver development.
It seems to be an assumption that getting old makes you incompetent. But my opinion is that "old" people who are incompetent were always that way. Perhaps they are no longer so good at hiding it. But those people twice my age who were good at their jobs when they were younger are still good at their jobs AND are able to adapt to new positions.
Mind you, I don't adapt as quickly as I did when I was 20. When you get older, you slow down a bit. Sometimes, learning takes a little longer. But intelligence and discipline can make up for that, and a lot of experience makes one more efficient at identifying WHAT to learn.
This is freaking stupid, write your congressmen.
Seriously
This is nothing new to anybody that works in BC, Canada. All "hi-tech" workers are not paid overtime until 60+ hours to "help us compete internationally".
Join the club...it's getting bigger daily.
In Ontario (Canada) certain professions are exempt from these limitations.
Basically if you are a professional, the laws aren't the same.
This means, doctors and engineers can't just walk away at the end claiming "my work week is over", nor is there much penalty for the employer if they don't push you out.
- it's certainly refreshing to read this here... - there are too many whiners out there, fer sure...
Sorry, man. The whole idea of a middle class was just a brief dream conjured up 60 years ago by people who knew that working together they could accomplish more than working alone. They probably got a lot of this ideology from being thrown into two world wars. But those days are *gone* -- you can see it here in the responses people give whenever someone says "union". "Whaa!? I'll do it myself, dammit, and make more than you." Silly, silly fools, doing battle with the windmills of industry. It's a losing game, as those in charge will simply pit us against each other for the honor of having a job.
It's amusing to watch how many mental hoops people will jump through just to hang on to their selfish and self-destructive principles.
Leave your hangups alone for a minute and read the Communist Manifesto. The gist is this:
When Marx wrote this, he was thinking about England during the Industrial Revolution. Compare this with what's happening in the world today, and predict which country reaches stage 3 first.
Note to moderators: Just because someone says something you don't like to hear, doesn't make it a troll.
Most states are not "Right to work" states. What this means is that if there is a union established at a company, every eligible employee is forced to contribute to that union. You can't say "I don't like the union and don't want to join". Money is taken directly out of your paycheck and given to the union. These unions then turn around and funnel a part of that money to the corrupt Democrat politicians who enacted those laws in the first place. In effect Democrat politicians have enacted a law that forces people to contribute to their political campaigns regardless of whether they support or oppose it.
I see a lot of posts here wittering on about how they'd never stoop to join a union and that they are clever enough to sort this out on their own, then bitching about the 60 hour week they do without compensation.
... whilst the "stupid" unionised workers in other industries are out drinking, getting the women (or men, if you bend that way / are female) and having fun.
You're inside waiting for a compile, or helping someone click an icon, half dead
Tell me again who the clever people are?
What is the deal with timesheets, anyway?
I work for a business that *sometimes* bills *some* portions of *some* projects in terms of the hours that went into them. I never work on those or any other client projects, and my time is always billed to the "overhead" job number.
I can appreciate collecting time information for people who work on billable business so that either you can bill directly for the hours or determine appropriate fee structures for non-hourly client billing, but why overhead employees?
The timesheets are never seen by HR, so it has nothing to do with time off or compensation. I've asked repeatedly (including getting into a heated argument with the dork that collects timesheets) why they can't just take my total hours worked in a year - vacation and divide by 12 and call it a day, and I get a lot of mumbo jumbo about why that wouldn't work.
i don't work for the govt or live in california... here is good ol'e TN we still get overtime pay :)
presmike
This sort of thing is going to really hurt America's tech industry in the long run. There is a huge job boom coming in the next few years as the baby-boomers retire, the economy recovers, and more businesses integrate computing into their infrastructures. Computer-science undergraduate numbers are dropping due to a perception that computer jobs are unstable (a perception that most tech workers support can attest to.). Now we have the government exempting essentially all IT workers from any mandatory overtime pay. This sort of idiocy is not going to encourage people to enter the field, and more work will have to be outsourced internationally, which will continue to increase the US trade deficit.
On the upside, at least IT workers can look forward to higher pay overall, although they will not have time to appreciate it.
A union for computer professionals, eh? Tricky that the title bar changes to say "Untitled Document".
Here in British Columbia, Canada, we are already saddled with even worse regulations. Check out the Employment Standards Exemption for High Tech workers.
Here's an excerpt:
And here's the rules that DON'T apply:
Government has no place interfering in what is a private agreement between employer and employee.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Very clear explanation by a Statistician (not an economist :) ) as to why the Jobless Recovery is occuring.
Short version: simultaneous inflation (of the money supply) and deflation (of price levels) are possible, when there is a large trade deficit and all the money expansion goes into credit underwritten by foreigners.
How does this coincide with state laws guaranteeing overtime pay? Would state laws preside over this or not?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I worked as an EMT with a county ambulance service for 10 years in the 80s (1980 - 1990) and we went 'round and 'round with the government body we worked for about the overtime issue. They tried to use the FLSA 7(k) and 13(b)(20) sections to exempt us from overtime for time when we might have been asleep (we almost never actually were allowed to sleep during that time, I remember one time we were out polishing the ambulance wheels at 3:30 because there was no calls at the time and the crew chief didn't want anyone to think they let us sleep on the job...) - so they were going to require us to be in the station house for 24 hours, but pay us for 16, even if we were working non-stop all 24 hours.
Of course, we were not very happy at the prospect, and complained loudly!
We were then routinely dispatched to fire scenes for 'standby' so that the county government could try to argue that we were 'fire fighting personnel' and fell under that exemption. When that didn't fly with the workers either (and the law was pointed out to the county commissioners), a LARGE chunk of back pay was paid.
The current law requires overtime for anything over 212 hours in a 28 day period for fire fighting personnel - for anyone else covered by the FLSA it is any hours over 160 in 28 days.
For you or I, that means working slightly over 10.5 hours a day every work day (5 days per week) for 4 weeks - WITHOUT GETTING OVERTIME PAY. (by the way, I am salaried and don't get overtime, anyway - but I do get compensatory time off...)
So when the article mentions the overtime protection already afforded to Fire, Police, and EMS workers, it is deceptive, as they are NOT paid under the same rules as other people.
My take on this is this is another "business friendly - fsck everyone else" move by the Bush administration. I don't like it.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
You don't even attempt to form logical arguments based off of your unbacked assertions. It's just one unbacked assertion after another. There may be people that agree with your assertions, but you're definitely not helping to explain your views, nor are you trying to convince people who don't already agree with you.
Maybe there's a reason that "this isn't the way people think these days." Maybe people generally think rationally, and your ideas don't stand up to scrutiny.
oneonta, city of the hills... my old stomping grounds. good riddance. ;P
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Dept. of Labor rules governing overtime pay haven't been updated since the 1970's. Those rules have an extensive list of occupations and exemption (from overtime) status - I think there are about 1300 of them. Since that time, many new "occupations" have been created (mostly in IT), and those that existed then are totally different now. If employees were in an occupation not covered by the DOL rules, they would often have to seek redress through the courts to have their overtime eligible status determined. This was very expensive and created an incomprehensible web of court rulings that employers couldn't make heads or tails from. The new DOL rules simply codify rulings already made. So for the first time in a long time, Employers and Employees will know the rules up front instead of a bunch of ad-hoc rulings that were fair to no one.
And by the way all of you "indentured servants" and "slaves" should get back to work now instead of reading Slashdot on your employer's dime.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Back in the early 90s, New Jersey passed a law doing some tax thing to soak the rich, and if you were single, the definition of "rich" was about $30K/year. One of my friends, nicknamed "Al the Communist", was really annoyed at this - he was about 60, divorced, working for the State government making $35K/year in a unionized job, and like all good socialists, believed that soaking the rich was a good thing, and that "the rich" were "somebody else" and "enemies of the working class". So not only did he have to pay the extra taxes, he had to put up with the state calling him "rich" and telling him that he was one of his own enemies.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Many clients I've had use time sheets as a form of cost tracking for internal projects. For example, Accounting is often the primary client for CIS. In order to justify DBA's, SysAdmin's, new systems and all, CIS will track the time/resources used to satisfy Accounting requests and the business goals. If there are more requests than resources to satisfy them, and CIS personnel have tracked their time correctly, CIS management can present a salient argument for acquiring the resources neccessary.
Well the previous "news" site wasn't a news site. Any story that has more adjectives than nouns and adverbs than verbs is not giving you the news, it is giving you an extremely biased opinion at best, and a shameless lie at worst.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
or if their hourly rate is $27.63.
Boy, good thing I make $27.64!
We must unite. The electronic infrastructure of this country depends on us, and we are getting the shaft.
This is the sort of thing a Union can help with. As a body we would have more power in the state and federal governments. a Union does not have to be the same as Unions in the industrial age, but if you want to be able to be treated reasonable, you had better unite.
Too many smart people think that being smart will allow you to survive, evidence proves that they are wrong.
We must adapt to the growing overbearing controls being fostered onto us be becomings a group with a single powerfull voice.
I say we all call in sick the first 2 working days may, send a message that we are not happy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So what the fuck difference does it make how much more our own government shits on us?
The question is how much longer are we going to bend over and lube our own assholes for them and take it? Vote *ANYTHING* but Republican or Democrat...think about their track record while you are filing for WELFARE and worrying if you got enough gas to make it back from the Food Stamp office.
$455 a week=$1820 a month=$21840 per year
Why don't you try 52 weeks a year instead of 48.
$23660
Oh wait, that's still pathetically small. Never mind.
Cause everyone wants a free Xbox360
$455 a week... Most people getting hit with that are entry level workers at firms where the competition for any job is intense and they're just glad to get a foot in the door at that company and try to move up the ladder.
At $27.63, you're making a base of $57,470 a year (52 x 40), plus getting your $27.63 an hour for hours 41 on. Your base rate is the same as the overtime rate for a guy making over $38k a year. He'd have to work 13.87 hours of overtime a week to make as much as you do without overtime. He's probably thinking "cry me a river".
The job market sorts itself out by supply and demand, just like many others. If your skill is a glut on the market, it will sell cheap. If your skill is in high demand and there aren't enough really good people to fill the available positions, you'll get a sweetheart contract to get you to come on board and stay on board for a while.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Contrary to what companies would have you believe, being salary does not immediatly make you exempt from overtime. Find your states labor office and get the exact rules regarding who qulifies for exempt status.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You presume too much. If geeks were 'smart' in the way you suggest, then they would be salesmen, not engineers. Interviewing is a marketing process, not a technical process. Competence, grooming, charisma, physical beauty, rapport, past experience, background check, formal education.....and then regional employment levels, business priorities, the latest WSJ market forecast, outsourcing trends, a golf buddy's recommendations.....all of these things influence one's employment. Surely you do not think that computer proficiency and "smarts" can overcome all of these variables?
Why would you want to abdicate responsibility to a union anyway? Soon enough they will do something you don't like and than you have no way out.
And you cannot say exactly the same thing about working for a corporation? In both cases there is a way out, namely, quitting. It may not be a feasible option, but it just cold economic fact.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
It only means that your employer isn't in violation of law if he doesn't offer it. It is still legal for you to have in your employment contract that you WILL be paid for overtime. Just as because the minimum wage law sets a minimum pay rate doesn't mean that you will actually get paid at that rate, this law doesn't mean you won't get overtime pay.
is a good reason for overtime. This why instead of working you 80 hours, they will hire a second person.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unforunately, at least 40% of the population disagrees. They believe, perhaps unconciously, that if they align themselves with the interests of the rich, goodness will trickle down to them, or they will eventually be recognized and rewarded for their loyalty. They (or more precisely, their children) will rise into the Society of the Rich. This is how poor immigrants are deceived into becoming Republicans (besides their religious conservatism, but that is another story).
Might as well call yourself a dog waiting for scraps at Master's table. But then again, I must just be a liberal unionloving pinko....what do I know.
===---===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
good stuff.
Why is this funny, its fucking pathetic!!
I immediatley zoomed in on the "or" part of the statement.
$23,660 / $455 = 52 weeks (This is salary)
$27.63 * 40 hr/week * 52 weeks = $57,470.40
So, if you make between $455 and $1105.20 per week you are not guaranteed overtime pay, nor is your employer obligated to pay.
Now, if I were in a similar situation, salary would be an option ONLY if my employer agreed compensate my income with overtime pay.
If you work for a company that kicks all ass, then working hourly IS basically like getting overtime ALL the time.
That $34,000 discrepancy is the fine line between a long term employment plan, and a foot out the door plain old job.
This actually reminds me of typical overseas outsourcing scenarious. Low money and security, or more money with freedom. (of course you can be fired anytime with the last)
Discuss.
Greg Horne
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
aren't IT workers taxpayers?
It's too bad women can't work computers, or she'd know we deserve our overtime.
It's the work that we avoid...
and we're all self-employed!
We like to work at nothing all day!
Seriously, go self-employed and learn the miracle of billable hours! I work 15-20 billable hours a week and bill out at $60-100/hour! Overtime? Who cares!!! Overtime's a joke anyway because the govt eats most of it (oh and that's the other perk of being self-employed...lotsa writeoffs that you don't get when you work for someone else)
You're using her as bait, Master!
My one experience with being forced to unionized was when I was a grad student, and it almost halved my salary. You see the typical TA stipend for Physics grad students is much higher than the typical TA stipend for English grad students. This is primarily due to the chronic undersupply of qualified Physics grad students to TA courses. But in the union shop where I went to grad school the union demanded that all TAs were paid the same rate. Net result: I was making half what I'd be making anywhere else. The university wanted quite badly to pay Physics TAs more, because they were having the devils own time recruiting, but the union wouldn't let them.
If IT unionizes there will be a great sucking sound as the talent moves on to find new fields, and people will look back and wonder why high tech just stopped innovating all of a sudden.
You mean to say that geeks are, or can be, social in an MMRPG? All I've ever gotten is someone to say "Heal me!" or "Pwned!".
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
www.techsunite.org
Acronyms Obfuscate
A union gives an individual the power of a group. If you're being treated unfairly, you don't have to individually complain and be discriminated against later. Your union can complain instead. This helps protect people who are afraid of being fired if they complain to their supervisor about something. A union means that you at your job with your problems are not alone. You don't have to put up with crappy pay or hours just because "it's better than being fired".
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
it's when the government gives too much power (or leverage, at any rate) to unions (or any group) that things go really bad. My point was that when faced with an untenable situation where a union is trying to force you into a position you do not wish to be in as a business owner, the right thing to do is precisely what Rearden did. A union can only hurt you if you let them. A private company doesn't OWE anyone employment, nor does it owe anyone its continued existence.
All in all, alot of it has to do with the individuals in a given company. Some steel workers have a wonderful environment, some of them are complete assholes that pitch a fit every time some obscure union regulation isn't followed and attempt to use it to gouge the employer in some manner.
Unions used to be a very good thing. They helped clean up manufacturing and bring regulations for safe working environments and improved products, which ended up improving efficiency and quality both. Now, for the most part, they mostly exist as a potential threat (or actual threat) to employers.
Well ive sent letters out to Several senators, the president and vice president on this issue about a month ago. (Thank you senator Clinton, The ONLY one who actually responded) Overtime being taken away would likely reduce jobs availible in the IT sector as it would make it cheaper to just pile more work on the workers, rather than just to hire a new person. This would increase job stress resulting in more medical problems increasing health insurance premiums. Bad all the way around.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
There is also something you can do about it.
The link below is a web form that will send a letter protesting the bill. It is a very SHORT form.
http://www.saveovertimepay.org/index.cfm?ms=google
Steve
You drive by a building. You see a bunch of union people standing outside and picketing, not because walmart has child laborers in bangladesh working for pennies a day or because they are considered to be the soulless epitome of corporate greed, no, they're picketing because walmart chose not to pay $35 bucks an hour to union builders when they could get the exact same building in much less time with much less hassle and much less expense from non-union people, who also, believe it or not, need to make a living.
Unions are useful when they serve as a pool of reliable certified labor. But when they decide to work AGAINST the employer instead of FOR the employer or even WITH the employer, their members should summarily be dismissed and replaced with non-union workers.
Employers and employees should work together to come up with a satisfactory compensation... not be pressured into it by threats on either side.
Poor fing, don't cwy, let Mr. Cheney kiss you on the Ashcroft and make it all bettew.
Let's face it. If the tech people had a union, that you could either choose to join or not, then there would people on both sides - those who joined and those who did not. Now look at it from a management perspective. They already have a benefits / 401k package that the HR department put together, they have procedures for handling how to do just about anything. Now they find out they need a computer dude. Do you REALLY think they would actually take their time when choosing between some guy who isn't in a union, and someone who will increase the amount of paperwork and other stuff they have to do? I wouldn't. The cost justification just isn't there. Unions breed laziness, and management knows that.
For those who care, I'm in a union, because I work for an educational institution; I've seen what unions do to the management and each other, and I can understand why they wouldn't be interested in hiring from them. I spend a great deal of time with my union rep having them explain to my why it's not OK for me to be "better at my job than my co-workers are at theirs." I'm not making this up!
Let's go a step further... I work as tech support, systems analyst, db designer and server admin. I think plenty of IT people have as diverse a collage of responsibilities as I do. Where would we fit in to the union? Can you really design a job description for every conceivable position, including all combinations thereof? Not only that, the union would have to figure out what you would get paid regardless of geographical area. I'd wager that most /.ers are from large towns, where the cost of living is higher. Would you really want to make the same wage that bubba in po-dunk Arkansas is making?
If it was possible for me to work at my current job without being a union working, I would jump at it without thinking - but since they negotiate the benefits, etc for all employees, I have no say.
Incidentally, there are other people who do exactly what I am doing, but work for grants rather than for "the system." The grants get renewed every 4 years, and these people have been doing what they were doing for as long as I have, and they even tell me I'm better at my job than they are at theirs. They make half again what I make, since they are able to renegotiate their contracts.
I'll let you decide who you'd rather be, but I know for a fact which camp I'm in.
This tagline brought to you by 1500 monkeys in just under 17 years.
And slashdot is any better? I just talked to my company's head of HR, and she says that State laws supercede Federal laws in this matter, so most people have nothing to worry about.
It is 48 weeks
Teachers in Florida are not allowed (by law) to strike. My Histroy Prof in high school mentioned this, there are some "essential" services that are legally not allowed to strike...
With the current climate in the USA, perhaps they were referring to an organization that would get teachers to strike as being A terror group.
Who knows.
Bad weather put off construction projects the month before, this was in large part due to those projects being staffed all at once once the weather turned better, or so I have read in the (aweful, liberal rag ;-) New York Times.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I have had a couple tech jobs now, and often discussed the overtime rules to see how decently compensated I'd be for that 6th and 7th consecutive work day, after some days that included 12+ hours of work.
Well damn, if they're going to say that they need me there extra, they're going to pay extra or I'll get to it when I'm back in the morning. =P
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
With those small rates and the inability to get overtime paid, I have the idea that people won't be interested in making a career in IT anymore.
Good for those indian folks !
They don't call it support for nuthin'. Ever support a 100lb laser printer over yer head? Rollout on 100+ computers: outa the box, onto the desk, outa the box, onto the desk, heave-ho! Stack these 36" monitors into a display wall, bucko. Hey, you, help me lift this Cray, wouldja?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You're all slightly right and mostly wrong. The laws in Canada differ from province to province. In Ontario there are over time exemptions for professional and IT workers. That is, salaried employees that fall into these categories are not eligible for overtime pay.
You can find out more information here. There's a chart that lists the professions and their specific exemptions. There's also a helpful FAQ on work hours and overtime eligibility in Ontario here. The specific table information pretaining to most /. readers makes this job category definition:
and if you think you dodged a bullet there because you're a P.Eng., think again. There's also: Check that table to see to what degree you're getting screwed.This law was implemented by the Mike Harris government as a way to help high tech companies in Ontario keep salaries under control but force their employees into insane working hours. The law was inacted thanks to lobbying pressure from the ITAC group (who also lobbied for the nicer 50% capital gains reduction income tax law, so they're not all bad I guess). Their reasoning was that salaries in the IT industry were already very, very high compared to the national average (note, they considered stock options and employee share programs as part of their "salary" calculations) so they should be able to force their employees to work as many hours as their are in the day.
Our current premier, Dalton McGuinty, had promised "sweeping" labour reforms in Ontario. Haven't seen any of that happen yet. Not holding my breath here waiting for it to happen...
Two US companies that I have work for, in OZ, don't pay overtime at all. They say that it is built into your 'package'. This is not a trend as it has been the situation for many higher paid public servants for 30+years in Australia.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Which is why we want the same government to be in charge of figuring out who gets health care and who doesn't?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
OBVIOUSLY, the point of the article is that they're not REQUIRED to pay extra for overtime work by "IT" workers, unlike other workers. In other words, "IT" workers are not eligible under the laws that mandate overtime extra pay for other types of workers.
Duh.
On the contrary... not being required to pay overtime would likely lead to less job creation, not more.
No employer is required to offer employees overtime, they may only be required to pay them for the overtime that they work. Some companies regulate this more than other by requiring supervisor permission to work overtime or requiring employees to sign up to be considered for overtime opportunities. For the employer, the decision is whether allowing employees to work overtime is better [read: cheaper] than hiring additional staff (with all of the additional associated costs: healthcare, social security, pension, severance costs if amount of work available decreases, etc). Relaxing requirements to pay overtime makes it more even advantageous for employers to ask staff to work more hours rather than hiring additional employees.
BTW... I agree with your assessment of many involved in "government work." Even those who are excited and motivated when they get there often find their souls crushed by the bureaucracy. But isn't the federal government (don't know about state and local) already exempt from DoL overtime regulations?
Uggh revision
They SHOULD always seek to hire the least amount possible. If it costs me $10 to make my product (car, ladder, gallon of milk, whatever) then I can sell it to you for $20 and make $10 of profit.
I never said that they shouldn't. It follows from that fact that employers will not hire more people just because wages fall. My opponent was saying that if wages dropped that employers would start hiring more people. This makes no sense from a business stand point. You hire the people you need, no more, and ideally, no less. However, just because there is no market reason for hiring everyone doesn't mean that not everyone should be given a chance to work. Try to come up with a free market reason for paying a living wage, for not having slavery, or for educating our youth, social security, affordable healthcare, growing enough food to buffer during famine years, etc. There are none that I can think of, or that are compelling enough to force all unregulated companies to do what I consider the desirable thing to do. However, that doesn't mean that they aren't worthwhile. Some things, such as certain basic rights, should not be enforced by the market.
As far as the labor price goes, it is simplified quite a bit. Obviously, if things get bad enough people will attempt to form their own business, revolt or strike, or simply refuse to participate in the economy. All of this happens in the 3rd world, where quite a few people simply refuse to participate in the economy, there are many rebellions and strikes, etc. So, you are right, there reaches a certain point where people simply refuse to go any lower. However, many things break before we get to that point, and that is not an ideal situation.
Ok, on the last one, it was a stupid question for me to ask, since , as you said, they can't hire people for less than $5.15. Point taken. I partially corrected myself later. However, I think even if they did get rid of minimum wage, that $5.15 is getting so low that as you pointed out, people are dropping out of the system rather than participate in the economy. Let's not kid ourselves, this is NOT a good thing. It would be helpful to think about what "dropping out of the system" really means. That means you could be staring down the barrel of a gun held by someone that drops out of the system or have your city over-run by protests and riots. Or, you could be paying a much higher social cost to house these people in prison, and ironically, this labor will then be used by private industry for below minimum wage. We already have the largest jail population of any country in the world. Granted, we are a civilized country, we don't shoot them like China, but that should get the concern of anyone who promotes freedom as you are claiming to do. Whose freedom are you promoting and why? What exactly are we supposed to do with all the people that can't earn a living, simply lock them up and be done with it? That doesn't sound like a free country to me, by any definition.
"Well the previous "news" site wasn't a news site. Any story that has more adjectives than nouns and adverbs than verbs is not giving you the news, it is giving you an extremely biased opinion at best, and a shameless lie at worst."
But enough about Fox News...
THEY ARE in the giveaway.
Unless you think that it's a good idea to let people starve, that's the way it will be unless we get a decent system for trading subsistence wages for a reasonable work week. Right now, we ain't got it.
Or would you rather have people robbing your house and selling smack to feed their families?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
many union (factory, anyway, marginally skilled.. doesn't really apply to carpenters and electrical workers and the like) workers make ridiculous amounts of money for work any jackass can do, and bitch and moan that they're being ripped off because they don't make $$ an hour more, and at the same time spout of bullshit about "the company being built on the backs of the workers"
It takes someone with vision to found a successful company. The people on assembly lines are just cogs which can be exchange for other cogs fairly transparently. Some of them work more efficiently than others, but union status or lack thereof doesn't serve as any real guarantee of effectiveness.
That prick was never elected, it would be
impossible to reelect him!
I don't live in California, but I am a salaried employee and I get overtime, and I'm an IT professional. Salary basically means you get paid for 40 hrs/week regardless if you are sick, or work less. It does not mean you can't get overtime. I do think many or most salaried employees are overtime exempt, however.
Something doesn't add up about this article.
$455 * 52 weeks = $23,600 / year
however
($27.63 * 40) * 52 weeks = $57,470.40 / year
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no logical reason to have two rules, when one precludes the other one. If I only make $455 in a week, that's a little over $11 / hour, which is far less than $27.63. Therefore, if the article is correct, the figure of $27.63 is arbitrary and redundant. I could just as easily say you're exempt if you make over $30,000 / hour and give as much useful information. However, since even the government isn't usually stupid enough to add a rule that is entirely useless and redundant (especially at the same time they're adding the rule that makes it redundant), I'm guessing that there's either more to the story than the article is letting on, or one of those numbers is incorrect.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
But enough about Fox News...
It seems that Fox's only purpose in the universe is to give people an excuse to ignore the blatant liberal bias on all other networks.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
When I look back at the 90s I use to work my a*s off 7 days a week. It was because of options. These days, now its suppose to be normal behavior. Think somebody forgot why people were working the way they were.
:)
If you want to work the same amount for 1/5 the salary and no options then you can go right ahead.
I'm not in a union, but my industry (banking) is heavily unionised in the UK and these conditions arise due to the power of the unions - trouble is the 2 recognised unions seem to spend more time fighting each other than standing up for the workers - which is why I haven't joined, but get a bit of a free ride at the moment.
I don't see how easy it is to negotiate an individual package when your company employs 70,000+ workers and only cares about filling the roles with a compentent (not necessarily outstanding) person - kinda handicaps the individuals negotiating ability.
>Look. 30s is not "old".
>I don't care what age you are. 30 is not old.
Depends, to my kids 30 is old. But hey, preaching to the quire. I am quite a bit older than 30 and I'm one of those consultants hired for my expertise. I was just addressing the original poster who seemed to be quite young (~20s, so there, you young punks, get off my lawn!).
I agree with you though, you cannot take it with you. I do, however, question your assertion that you need to spend 70-100 hours a week to keep on top of things.
Also, watch out for that MBA. A lot of MBAs spend a lot of time away from their families. Having an MBA doesn't shield you from the grind, you're just grinding different (is that an Apple slogan?).
I'd like to start off by saying that I'm not making crap now. I work as a computer tech and love my job, but it doesn't pay enough to even cover my expenses. My girlfriend (bless her) covers all of my bills, while I pay the rent and my car payment only.
I was working as a UNIX admin for a fortune 100 company, and being paid around $28k/yr.
The problem isn't that I was being a greedy bastard and collecting as much money as I could from the company. The problem was the fact that as a salaried employee, I was not only expected to work my 40 hours/wk, but expected to work into the evenings, on-call, and some weekends. I would say that on an average week, I would work 50 hours. On an on-call week where projects were screwed up (that would be MOST of the weeks I worked there), I put in 60 and sometimes even more.
I was perfectly content with that setup because my girlfriend is understanding and didn't mind that my hours were screwy. I was paid overtime for the extra hours, plus an on-call bonus (flat $100 if I recall correctly).
That was then, and under those criteria.
Under the criteria listed now, I would lose my overtime pay.
The company was outsourcing to India (and even stepping up efforts to do so). The company also made unreasonable requests of people for overtime on a regular basis, and threatened to make cuts if people weren't "team players" (read: "yes-men or women).
Take away the overtime pay, and you have an industry where employers can scare, threaten, and harass their employees into working overtime just so they won't lose their jobs. In a market (even within 50-60 miles) where it's nearly impossible for anyone without a doctorate and double-masters to find work in IT or technology in general, you can't say "screw you" and find another job. You have to take it. You can't risk losing your job because you have a family and bills to pay, right?
You're now looking at a situation where your employer can basically make you work 60 hours or more per week just so you won't lose your job. You won't have time to spend with your family. You won't be getting as much sleep. You'll have less money to pay your bills, put gas in your car, or even engage in recreational activities outside of work that would have otherwise made the situation more palatable. You won't be able to lose the income it takes to take time off to go to the doctor. Your employer doesn't have to say it directly, but can hint around the fact that by taking time off, you're not committed to the team or your job. You will be more stressed and hate your job more. You won't have any outlet for it, and probably take it out on your family or friends. You'll probably need counseling but won't be able to afford it or take the time off to get it.
Choice: Stay and hope you make it, or get a job waiting tables (as a few previous posters mentioned) and deal with the fact that you need to live with your spouse and three kids in a two-bedroom apartment in a bad part of town because that's all you can afford.
As a member of Washtech- I need to point out that the CWA movement is called TechsUnite.
If you don't like unions, there's always the Guild
But as I posted in the other thread- at the rate things are going, unionization won't save us. It's the race for the bottom of globalization and nobody is safe.
This year- be happy with a starting wage of minimum wage- many of your brethern have experience 17-26 months of unemployment in the last three years
Next year- be happy with $.24/hr (yes, that's 24 cents per hour), the de facto minimum wage of China
The year after that you'd better be happy with a house, a pound of food rations a day, and massa giving you a single suit a year- because that's what the slaves in the Sudan get
Welcome to the REAL effect of the perfect storm of a labor surplus combined with worldwide sourcing- deflation of the cost of labor until the only country getting the jobs is the one that still has slavery
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
" government gives you minimum protections - by defination that's all you need."
Right. By definition I can live on minimum wage. -and no health care. It's pretty clear the author has never been in a position of need or he wouldn't spout this FUD.
Your experience is not shared by others. I've ben to 2 grad schools (MS, Ph.D.). The first was union (SUNY). Here graduate assistants, whether on RA or TA, received health insurance, parking permits, and had an advocate to contact in case of (abnormal) abuse. The 2nd school was not unionized and gave no benefits at all. Another good example of the utility of union representation is part time UPS workers. As a part-timer at UPS while an undergrad, I sweated for 20 hrs. a week, but got full medical & dental thanks to Teamsters representation. An emplyer/employee win/win.
I beg to differ. I have lived in cockroach infested apartments while having a grand total of half a bottle of ketchup in my refridgerator for food.
That's why I worked my ass off in school and was motivated to find a great job and work hard at it.
I don't expect someone with a family to be working a minimum wage job. If that's the case, then something went drastically wrong in that person's life, and they probably have no one to blame except themselves. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be the stepping stone to higher paying jobs after you've gotten experience.
I'll say it again - ulitmately the only person responsible for you is YOU. You have certain rights and protections under the law to help you, but you also have no guarantees, so the solution is to work hard and advance yourself. You may not become a millionaire, but anyone can improve their "status" with hard work and GOOD DECISIONS.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Child labor
Simply put, organized labor had little to do with the end of child labor. See, for instance, Houghton-Mifflin's Reader's Companion to American History. While organized labor was certainly involved in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (which implemented a sweeping federal solution) child labor advocates had been working on the issue (including passage of two laws by Congress that were overturned by the Supreme Court) since the 1880s. Their appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt, and her subsequent influence, were crucial to including child labor in the FLSA. To the extent that this was a union issue, it was because the unions recognized that a) children worked cheaper, and b) couldn't legally sign a yellow card (a parent or guardian would have to). Organized labor, even today, is generally hostile to child workers--routinely arguing for an increase in the minimum wage, not because it would have any impact on a union member, but because it drives up the price of cheap teenaged labor, making it less competitive.
And let's not get all ga-ga about the unions
While unions have certainly been instrumental in fighting corporate villains, unions have certainly been guilty of their own evils as well. Two words: "Longshoremen" and "Teamsters." Organized crime figured out a long time ago that managing the assets of a union was a substantially better way to steal money than holding up banks--the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund was plundered by the Mob and its union leadership cronies, with absolutely zero concern for the workers they claimed to represent.
And it isn't just crime
Sometimes the union behaves just like the Big Business they claim to oppose. Case in point: in the early 1980s Mack Truck was faced with an aging assembly plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and wanted to build a new assembly plant in Lehigh County. They bargained with the affected union locals, and came to an agreement that gave the (struggling) company givebacks on wage rates, but gave the employees job security. However--the UAW rules required that any local bargain could not be voted on by the local membership--it could only be approved by the national union. And the UAW management decided that if they approved the Mack deal, they would find themselves in a bad position in upcoming negotiations with Caterpillar. The result: the Mack bargain was rejected--and the union repeatedly refused to let the union members (who strongly backed the deal) vote on it. Mack subsequently built the plant in Winnsboro, SC, outside the jurisdiction of the union locals. They offered jobs in Winnsboro to any Plant 5C employee who wanted to take the position--but at non-union rates, with no job guarantees. Some workers made the move (and subsequently organized the plant in Winnsboro, but at substantially lower rates). Most just lost their jobs. And the upcoming negotiations with Caterpillar? That became one of the longest, nastiest strikes in late 20th century American labor history--and the union lost.
Bottom line: UAW executives (who, incidentally, continued to earn six-figure salaries) forced thousands and thousands of union families out of work, into the cold, in the worst job market since the Depression.
Unions have, in some places, in some circumstances, been a very positive influence. But they had scant influence on child labor, and there have been many circumstances where they have done real damage to the very people they claim to represent.
The key point you've made revolves around *sustained* overtime hours. In many businesses where I've seen people qualify for overtime pay, it's not a situation where week after week, the same person is clocking 50 or 60 hour weeks.
Rather, it's a mechanism to compensate people for the occasional extra long day they put in.
In computer support or software development type roles, in particular, a project can run into much longer hours than planned. While you may not be at peak productivity after 9 hours straight, it's still better if you finish the whole thing while you're focused on it - instead of break your train of thought because it's 5PM and "time to call it a day". (Worse yet, if the project has a tight deadline, companies not letting you put in overtime on it might start someone from the next shift on your problem. This wastes hours as they "reinvent the wheel", preparing to pick up where you left off.)
I've given up allowing the law in the U.S. to define common sense. If I work an hour, I get paid an hour.
Even without this new law, HR has already classified me as exempt from overtime. I have no non-exempts reporting to me, I am not a manager of non-exempts. I'm just a regular joe, working to making the company successful. Yet they do not, or will not, pay me overtime even though I work beyond my 40 hours a week.
My company has side-steped the law by not paying me overtime. Somehow I'm classified as exempt from overtime even though I meet none of the federal requirements for exemption. What difference does it make when additional new laws are defined. I'm getting screwed out of the overtime I'm working. I'm going to to get screwed out of overtime under whaterver new law or re-definition of my job that is sent down the pipes.
I rotate being on call. 24/7 for one week out of 10. When I am on call, I am under the control of the company. I cannot leave the pager area because I am expected to respond to pages. I cannot do this or that because I am expected to to respond to the pages... It is not voluntary. So, as long as they control me, I am on the clock. As long as they dictate that I do this or that... I am on the clock. Paid or not.
What I do is keep a personal log of the money they owe me. They pay me the normal 40 hours for that week. I subtract the 40 hours they paid me from the 24/7 I actually worked. The math says I'm left with about 16 days of pay they didn't give in my check for that week.
So, when I surf the net all day instead of doing work, that's one day... subtract 8 hours from what they owe me. Now they only owe me 15 more days of compensation. When I order memory simms on my corporate account and install them in my home personal computer instead of my work computer, that's two or three more days off the tab. Now they only owe me, let's say, ten more days of pay. When I accept corporate assets like laptops, servers or routers in exchange for money... I consider it a barter agreement. I can only assume my company would rather I walk out with armfulls of equipment, supplies, whatever... Rather than to pay me the money I've earned. It's a win - win. They don't have to pay taxes on the payroll; I get compensated for the hours I work.
I doubt my company would see it this way. But, they're blind. Not only are they blind, but they also think I'm stupid. That's okay. I get compensated for the hours I work. So what if the compensation isn't in the form of an hourly wage. That's a choice "they" made.
...after being found guilty of treason in a court of law, of course.
Until we get rid of the idea that our elected offical are anything other than our goddamn hired men, and start recognizing that the citizen is the owner of America, and that the country should revolve around satisfying the citizen, then this pack animal crap will continue.
We need to start punishing our hired men in a drastic fashion.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
who would of thought that the compassionate conservative would ever put the knife in our back?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
What do you think that India E-voting article was really about? They are....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Socialism should be the ultimate longterm goal of ANY rational society.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
in australia, overtime in the IT industry has long been a thing of the past. i don't get paid overtime and i work additional hours most days. none of the people i know working in IT get paid overtime either.
i have no idea what the law is regarding it but that's the way it is in practice.
humans evolved as pack animals--those at the top of the hierarchy got the social status. And even now they get their way from the sheeple masses.
Plus, the last 100 years of propaganda directed towards the sheeple masses helps get them nice and docile.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Theres only so much you can overclock a human before it heats up too much, and then if you push it too much it will burn and crash on you.
More units at 35hr/week would mean
* more happy people
* more people with free time to persuit REAL LIFE, not -working-
* more people employed
* less crimes, because people are happy and have cash.
* more people enjoying themselves, being HUMAN
* more people spending money, rather than work 24/7.
If managers dont see this, then to hell with em, and bankcrupt the whole planet and start again.
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
after a fair trial for treason in a recognized court of law. .....just a suggestion!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Right, Back to the logic check...
There is one potential upside to this, even if it's still not a good deal over all: if they don't have to pay you overtime anymore where they did before, that takes away some of the cost advantage of sending your job to India, and you might be more likely to keep your job.
You're still getting the shaft, it's just a smaller shaft than you would have gotten.
Rich people and high income earners should be highly taxed, e.g., 50% taxation for 200K of income and unearned income, with progressive gradations on up from there. Wealth over a certain amount should also be taxed at a much smaller rate.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Structual changes all around. not just the US. Nova had a story last night on some of the changes. China becoming more affluent (#2 car market), and what that means for the environment, theirs and ours. Changes in Japan and the birth rate, as well as immigration policy, and what that means for their senior citizens, and young people. Changes in India and what the population explosion means there. Changes in South Africa and what the death rate (AIDS mostly) means there. We're focusing on only a tiny slice of the global picture. What about oil and the Euro? Middle East unrest? Destruction of the rain forest and other environments? Weather that is more extreme in it's cycles, and mild in it's absences. Quite frankly humanity is going to be in for the biggest rude awakening of it's ENTIRE existance. What's not just same old, same old, but same old on a much larger scale combined with the new that has never been seen before (We've created a mouse from two female parents. That's not natural, that's man playing God Wonder what other little tricks we don't hear about?).
BTW The Free Trade/ Outsourcing issue has made prime time. There's one of those drama shows on one of the big three (don't know which one). Real life made into art.
The exemption which allows employers to exempt computer professionals earning over 27.63 per hour from overtime payment was added to the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1996. If memory serves, that puts it right square in the Clinton Administration. It's a good idea to check out the facts before you throw rocks. :-)
Flat taxes may end the home-run business that is operated by someone who doesn't do proper accounting in the first place, but most small businesses are still corporations, partnerships, etc. There is no reason a flat tax would deny a business the right to subtract expenses from revenue!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
i have. i used to work for a number of companies in upstate new york, boston and salt lake city in the past 8 years. I worked a regular 40 hour work week in the office/on call (ie. would work 30 hours in the office, telecommute, and take calls on weekends) and would always get paid overtime for my work.
/.ers were working for, but you were getting ripped off.
I'm not sure what companies many of you
oh yeah one more thing. one company didn't give me time and a half for working overtime, they kept paying me my regular rate. it was a LOW stress job that wouldn't call me at 3am for a server being down, we were a public company, but if a server went down at 3am EST, and no one noticed till 6am (when I showed up) it wasnt a big deal like most people believed.
(sorry, when your boss is screaming because one person, ONE PERSON, couldn't dial in at 3am to update some mundane detail that could have waited till the morning, he should be the one fired or fix it himself. and that's precicely what happened at this job)
anywys, just my 2 cents
So, how would you feel about this little tidbit of legislation, if it were only in effect for companies and corporations who had no (read: zero) outsourcing? All companies who have a portion of themselves contracted/outsourced to non-american companies are not eligable under such legislation.
Any thoughts?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Many industries like the auto parts makers or nursing or software demand 60+ hours every week and often "pay off" vacations...those are the ones crying to the labor board because they are constantly getting sued for breaking the current LAWS!
On the other hand I always found that "occasional" extra item to be needed almost everyday... you know at 15 minutes before time to leave those "emergencies" come up you have to have "tonite"...get's to be it's own kind of abuse.
Frankly, it's a place OSS can work for the industry, buy taking the control out of hands of manufactured solutions and back to crafted ones...look how well plumbers still do. even though anybody can buy the parts & tools for plumbing a whole house for under $1000 bucks it still takes a competent person to put it all together and make it work...same is true of IT in very many ways...and the pipes always need fixed because people always keep "using"!
but things have to get worse before they'll get better. The management has to be allowed to take the wrong course...and to suffer some big financial losses in the process!!!
Are there really IT job in the US still. Oh btw they dont pay overtime in India.
As long as Bush is in office the CEOs will always win, In November outsource Bush back to Texas.
Rich people and high income earners should be highly taxed, e.g., 50% taxation for 200K of income and unearned income, with progressive gradations on up from there.
Thank you, Mr. Socialist Scumbag. Yep, here in America being rich is a crime - at least among the stupid fucks who aren't rich and are jealous of those who are.
The 'rich', whatever definition you use to define that term, should *never* be taxed more than anyone else. Not only does this fly in the very face of what America supposedly stands for - freedom to do with *your* resources as *you* please, and not what some fucking liberal loon thinks you should do with them - but it's also completely nonsensical. If I pay ten times as much in taxes will my broken sewer line be fixed ten times faster than yours will? Will holes in my street be paved with ten times the skill and care? Will I get ten times the service if I need to apply for a construction permit for an addition to my home? Do I get to skip to the head of the line at DMV because I pay so much more?
If I don't get ten times the service that you do, and I don't put ten times the burden on the GOVERNMENT BUILT AND TAX SUPPORTED infrastructure as you, then why the fuck am I paying ten time as much in taxes? Because some jealous little shit who's angry that he's not me wants to punish me for leading the life that he doesn't have?
Let's change our motto from 'land of opportunity' to 'land of vengeful little pissants who think wealth is criminal'.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
It works this way in Sweden, Europe, at least.
:-)
Most tax laws, standards, and regulations are expressed in basbelopp (base amount of money). For example, a regulation can say that you may earn up to two basbelopp per year on your hobby without being taxed for it.
(An utterly improbable regulation, but anyway.)
Then, every year, the national economic institute looks at inflation and other economic trends, and establishes the new basbelopp.
It sure as hell works better than hardcoding a number into law. Although, some regulations do hardcode such numbers here too... usually regulations involving fines. Speeding fines is one example. I was recently fined $220 for going 183 on the freeway with my Hayabusa (a bad-ass motorcycle).
As long as bosses think of workers as replaceable cogs and not human beings with actual lives and families, we will need unions to protect ourselves from those parasites. You know what it takes to found a successful company? Money and family connections, not vision. My heart bleeds for all the poor overworked CEOs who aren't getting what's rightfully theirs because the workers are taking all the profits.
Cooperatives work perfectly well without bosses. Some of the largest plywood producers in the US are worker cooperatives. So companies can and do get by without bosses, but show me one that succedes without workers.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, really, at least as soon as the election is out of the way.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Most IT workers I know who are above entry level are Exempt status employees -- no overtime, even before the new rules. No 40 hour weeks, either, although that's the general guideline, but the number of hours to get the job done. Might be 40, 60 , or 25. No clock punching, either, just a timesheet indicating you were here that day or not.
Well how come that doesn't work for the state laws in California that make it legal to distribute pot to the chronically ill? Is it only for labor that state laws supercede & if so why is that?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
"Ripped off" depends on what one expected. My boss is really good about saying, "don't come in tomorrow" after we've spent a lot of extra time putting out a major fire or making sure that a schedule didn't slip. He's not required to do that, BTW. I wouldn't have enough time over 40hr. to be worth claiming. And he's *also* good at seeing to it that those long days are few and far between. That's great for me, 'cos I like regular hours. I'm compensated for lack of overtime differential by being able to arrange my schedule to suit my needs (within reason) so long as the work gets done in timely fashion, which is the essence of what "exempt worker" means.
Some people didn't ask for enough at contract time and have trouble living on what they make without frequent overtime pay. Many of them come to see overtime as something they should get every week. If that's the way one wants to live, go for it, but don't expect to see me working every evening or weekend.
Some people work in situations where split-second coordination is essential, so strict scheduling and timekeeping are a must. Just because there's an emergency doesn't mean everybody can slack off the next day, so overtime pay (and overtime diff.) are quite appropriate. I have great difficulty imagining IT positions that would fall into this category, for which I give thanks as I've worked in such a shop (USPS sorting floor, not IT) and I'm happy to leave such working conditions to those who like them better.
There're people who are abused by bosses who think that salaried people should work 168 hr./wk. for 40hr. pay, but that's not the whole story.
form of capitalism, eventually you'll have just a few global mega corporations calling the shots, and you will see a massive "company town and store" scenario where you basically have serfs and masters.
This is because in the real world, not the theoretical world, people are greedy,and even greedy beyond money where they strive for actual physical control and power over other humans, and the corporations will all keep their prices high and wages low from collusion, once they achieve near monopoly status and once there is little difference between the corporate bosses and the government bosses.
You can NOT separate economics, politics, and the human social condition and psyche into little stand alone niches, they have always been completely intertwined, none of them exist in a pure vacuum isolated from the other.
Theory does not always equate practice
It's already bad enough now the way it is with SOME controls in place, left unfettered, well, we have historical examples to indicate the progression most likely to occur.
And this also negates the real world reality that we have, and is often ignored by the arguers on the other side, the "anti union and no controls" disciples, is that *corporations already have very powerful unions themselves*, they have industry groups who chip in and use lobbying, etc, along with buckets of cash, to "get their way" in society and government. They run their own form of highly effective and profitable for them form of "collective bargaining", except it's called lobbying and campaign contributions, and well...let's be frank here, they also use bribery and blackmail in various manners to a huge extent. Who is not familiar with the terms kickbacks, or payola, for example?
And they also have an edge that the individual doesn't have, they get all the benefits of getting their hands on profits, but they have an extra legal layer of protection against malfeasance, hiding behind a corporate front man with their legally defined artifical personhood, which insulates them from liability in many diverse ways.
The single individual worker has no means to level the playing field, hence, unions came about, just an extension of the old guild idea.
In the US, historically, we had our best example of a robust and healthy and successful middle class when we had the highest levels of union membership combined with national protectionist policies. This is what government is for, to protect the people, to do the peoples business, not exactly to do the artificial person's0the corporations-business. This time period would have been the late 50's through the 60's roughly speaking. We also had a much more diversified economy, that had a lot more internal trading than external trading(we took advantage of ou5r size, common language, good labor pool and natural resources,etc), we kept a lot more money inside the borders and trading around than what we exported.
And speaking of borders, that was back when we really had a better handle on immigration, we still had it of course, as we have always had it, it was controlled and legal (I am in favor of that) and illegal border jumpers were much less common and the government regulated it much better as a matter of common sense policy and following the laws. It existed, but not to the degree we have now, where it is totally out of control and ignored by the government in most practical aspects, harm to the economy and reducing national security are the two biggest issues there.
Proof is easy, in the 50'sand 60's, a single middle-wage level blue collar job was more than adequate to have a large family with many children, one spouse could stay home and do one of the most important jobs there are in human existence, raising children, you could have decent home ownership with mortgages half the time limit average that you commonly see now, downpayments were much lower, decent pay that allowed for good savings, full benefits, pensions, new normal appliances of the era, decent car, etc.
Ah, but you're missing something:
If they can make such a huge profit, selling their product made with really cheap labor, then being greedy, they'll want to make more. So they'll use those profits to hire more and more cheap workers, to make more and more profits.
Now you have an entire country full of workers with better opportunities than they had before. Then as all of them improve their standard of living and all of them are employed, they start to demand slightly higher wages. The gradual improvement continues, until eventually the company decides it should go find a different country where labor is cheaper. Then that country goes through the same gradual improvement process.
Meanwhile, the first country is bitching about huge sections of their valuable sweat shop industry being outsourced to foreigners, but at this point they're also hiring their own workers to build new housing and infrastructure, which they can afford now because of all the money that the corporation brought into their country.
Given a completely open global market, and no issues or government or laws, (some countries would offer really cheap labor, but are avoided by companies because they have unstable governments or lack the rule of law) the tendency will be a raise in standard of living across the board for everyone, especially those at the very bottom. Now, in the real world, there are lots of things standing between us and that idealized version of the global market, and there are some "growing pains" present in the rapid adjustments. But that's a whole 'nother discussion...
In this case, you need to pick up an economics book and read a little. It can take 50 -10 years for some effects to take hold in the market. That's how economics work. Besides, if the labor department inacted something in the 1990s and this admin is just revising it for clarity, then it's both side's fault.
The ad hominem attacks don't do anything to strengthen your position.
from what i knew, in NY and MA time and a half was written in the law for over 40 hours of work. unless you were salaried.
AS I understand unless you are 1) Un-Skilled, 2) Semi-Skilled, 3) Live in CA, 4) Make horrible wages or 5) Had it specified in your contract IT was already exempt from overtime.
Dan
I've never received any overtime for any IT job I've ever held, not matter how many hours I worked. The idea that these new rules take something away from me is just pure BS. All the rules do is spell out what had already been going on.
Clear, Dark Skies