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.'"

Comments

Well...

[setzman]

$455 a week=$1820 a month=$21840 per year.

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.

Re:Well...

[hsidhu]

With regards to this, i have a question.

Lately there have been couple of articles on slashdot and basically satated that most of the computer work these days is not really "white collar" (I dont like these terms presonally).

So if one looks at other jobs around alot of workers are unionized eg, airline pilots/mechanics, auto workers etc etc.

Is there a union for computer professionals?

If so which one I havent found one, if not why not?

We talk all high minded on slashdot thousands times a day every day 365 days a year. Is it all talk or do people here think that a Computer Professionals union is needed these days?

Re:Well...

[pyrotic]

I belong to the National Union of Journalists in the UK. They issue press cards, but also do uniony things, like get discounts for buying Macs, insurance deals, bitching about certain companies. If you think programmers are a diverse and egocentric bunch, you should really spend some time with journalists. The union here covers editors, TV folks, photographers, staffers, freelancers, and reporters from tech to gardening to celebrities to war.

Re:Well...

[hereticmessiah]

Thing is, most unions are just fine. The number that get out of control is actually quite small compared to the total number. Most of the nonsense that get's bandied about on unions is quite simply an attempt to demonise them in the eyes of the 'middle class'. Remember, the US is a country where 90% of the population consider themselves middle class and yet 50% are below the poverty line.

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. People forgot that business is a tool of society, tolerated because it theoretically can help society improve the lot of its members efficently. This is the great thing about free enterprise.

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. If, for instance, chemical companies weren't regulated, they'd dump their waste wherever it was cheapest and most convenient, taking a short-term gain for itself in exchange for a medium- to long-term loss for itself. That's why government is there, and that's why free enterprise needs to be regulated.

Unions are another form of balance, a form of last resort for the worker when government doesn't work for them. They didn't just appear out of nowhere. The came about because workers felt they were getting a raw deal and deserved to have their lot in life improved. If you want to see a good reason why unions are necessary, go work in a catfish processing plant somewhere in the mississippi delta.

We don't have laws to prevent you and I from commiting crime. The majority of people rarely intentionally break the law. We need them to prevent and punish those who do step beyond the realm of what is good for society, who break society's contract of mutual respect.

Unfortunately, this isn't the way people think these days. More's the pity.

Re:Well...

[jak163]

I think this is an important realization, that a union isn't necessarily just trying to reduce productivity or tilt the playing field toward itself, but in some ways is needed in order to give IT workers the ability to retain what are generally understood to be neutral but fair rules for the game.

The point of time-and-a-half isn't so much higher pay as shorter hours. It's a way of creating an eight-hour day, which was a core labor project for about 70 years, without an outright ban on labor over eight hours. Part of the reason for the eight-hour day is not just justice or humaneness but also the idea that workers are more productive and efficient when they are well-rested.

As someone has pointed out, individual workers can't say no to a boss that tells them to work more hours. This is where a union can accomplish something that an individual can't, but the resulting legislation is not unfairly tilting the outcome toward union members. It benefits all workers.

Ironically it is the decline of unionization from 45 percent at the end of World War II to 9 percent today that has resulted in time-and-a-half and eight-hour days being limited to union workers. It's the weakness of unions that has made union efforts result in special priviliges, not union strength.

During the boom, I found friends in IT generally contemptuous of unions and also concerns about the impact of efficiency improvements on workers. Now that times are tough IT workers are dropping some of the social darwinism and have become more aware of the importance of unions to some of the regulations they take for granted, such as overtime pay (child labor regulations and workplace safety are others). Hopefully this will signal a turn in one of the most important new industries, and be part of a movement to revitalize the labor movement and bring American politics back to the mixed-economy center from its current corporate focus.

Re:Well...

[Catbeller]

That's when he pointed out a fair percentage of people in the work world are in their forties, are too experienced to the point of being overqualified for many jobs (to make a change), are set enough in their ways they can't adapt to something roughly similar to their current skill set, and don't have enough experience to move up (the Peter Principle[1]). Bottom line? They're waiting for the next 20-30 years to pass by so they can retire.

Well, by that measure, the logical thing for managers to do is to let go of everyone over 40; overqualified, inflexible, chairwarmers waiting for the next thirty years to retire.

And that's exactly what they are doing. Firing people over 35 and hiring young inexperienced people.

Points:

How can you be overqualified and at the same time inflexible? If you are more than qualified for the job, how could you have been inflexible?

Where exactly are YOU planning to work when you are forty? I assume you are a IT/Comp Sci/Engineering type. The professor's pointmakes sense to you now, because you are young (another guess). What are you planning on doing when you are useless? Will you be overqualifed and yet have spent two decades becoming too inflexible to learn new techniques? If you are the exception, why assume everyone else will be the lump you won't be?

And the fastball: how old was the old, inflexible professor? Over 35? Where does he work? I'm thinking he's too old and tired to be employable at his advanced stage in life.So why listen to his unemployable brain? If he is working, at his sad time of life, then where's he getting off making such a comment? If he isn't working in the private sector today, in his golden years, then how does he justify teaching you? He's just as superannuated and untrainable as the old professionals he's dismissing.

**

I was watching Leo LaPorte interview Kevin Mitnick (37+)on TechTV's The Screen Savers a month ago. Kevin,old hacker that he is, has started a security company. Wrote his own code to test the security of networks.

My recollection of a bit of it:

Leo's question: who wrote the code? An old guy like you can't be doing it, right?

Kevin (slightly off-balance): Um, I wrote it.

Leo: But you can't be up to date with all the stuff that's happened in the last few years?

Kevin (a little stunned): Well, I do read books...

**

It's sad, this meme. Almost all the yunguns here on Slashdot posting today will be olduns in ten years. Am I listening to a giant asssemblage of soon-to-be irrelevant fossils?

Maybe it's the old chicken-and-egg syndrome. Older IT workers stop trying because they know that they won't be taken seriously anymore because they don't play the Star Wars RPG at lunch with the other workers, or can't go bar hopping with the gang after work? (yup. speaking from observation at work).

Is it fossilization of the brain, which isn't physiologically possible at the ancient age of 40 -you're at your peak, really - or is it the simple prejudice of the management and the younger workers themselves that set the stage for the demise of the 35+ year old's career?

Not idle questions. A lot of are hitting that wall now.

(My opinion, for what's it's worth, etc: you lose that learning edge when you get married and have kids. Life takes up too much time to spare 20 hours a day learning and coding. Unmarried guys tend to hang in longer.

You also can just get tired of the politics and the endless staring at a screen.

It's not brain death, or inflexibilty. It's about becoming MORE flexible, acquiring more interests, like girls and national politics. And maybe just about requiring more sleep :)

Re:Well...

[Artifakt]

"Is it fossilization of the brain, which isn't physiologically possible at the ancient age of 40 -you're at your peak, really -"

Even at 40, you're probably not at your peak yet, unless you choose to be.

There's been a number of myths about this for way too long. People point to scientists such as Einstein, ignoring the Maxwelloids and Lord Kelvenites who did some of their best work after 40, or occasionally 60. Buckminster Fuller was famous enough to pose at age 40 for a bust commemorating his career in 1929, but practically everything he is now noted for he did after that. The same sort of examples can be cited for art and music (Look at what Bach did after 40). I'm citing mostly historical figures because, if anything modern medicine is making the chance of outstanding performance in later life grater and greater.
Meanwhile, some people ignore counter-evidence of rather obvious kinds. (For example, the US Army is generally a young man's game for purely physical reasons, but they grant hundreds of age wavers to keep talented people over age 60 in every year. These are people being kept primarily for their mental skills, and who are also willing to work hard enough at keeping up their physical abilities to not be knocked out for not being able to do 50 push ups on a test before they are even eligible for a waver - obviously that's a lot more selective a pool than in the tech industry, where a diabetic or wheelchair bound person is unlikely to be rejected on those grounds before they even get rejected for age biases).

Re:Well...

[ultranova]

Government does create laws to protect people, but when you get a job you enter into what should be a private contract between you and your employer. The government has created labor laws protecting workers. These laws define the length of a workweek, they define a minimum wage, they establish departments like OSHA. There are no longer any valid reasons for unions.

Of course there is. Namely, to be the representative of the workers, just like the corporation is a representative of the shareholders.

Maybe this will be easier for you to understand if you replace the union with a corporation. That corporation rents workforce to the other companies. It pays its employees most of what those other corporations pay for rent, keeping a small amount for itself (union fees). You should have no objection to this, because, after all, a private contract is a private contract, whether it's between an employee and a corporation or two corporations or an employee and an union.

This, then, allows us to adress your points as follows:

Don't anybody whine that they may lose overtime benefits. Nobody guaranteed you a job out of college, let alone one that paid $50k or more because of overtime.

Don't no corporation whine that they may lose profits. Nobody guaranteed them cheap workforce, let alone one that works for less than $50k for overtime.

If you think you're working too hard for not enough pay, that's when you go to your employer, show the evidence of how much extra you've done for the company, and ask for a raise. If you're not inclined to do that, then you probably would LIKE more money, but realize you're not worth it.

If you think you're paying your employees too much for too little work, that's when you go to the union, show them the evidence of how much extra you've paid to them, and ask for a lower price. If you're not inclined to do that, then you probably would LIKE a better deal, but realize you're not worth it.

If you're scared you'll get fired, then you probably realize that you are expendable and are being paid what you are worth to the company.

If you're scared you'll get the contract terminated (the employees go to a strike), then you probably realize that you are expendable and are being paid what you are worth to the union and its employees.

If you don't like, go somewhere else. Despite all the doom and gloom news, there are plenty of jobs.

If you don't like, go hire someone else. Despite all the doom and gloom news, there are plenty of workforce. Of course, you propably won't find any who will work for any less, but hey, that's marketplace for you.

If you're not qualified, then you don't have anyone to blame but yourself.

If you're incapable of making a profit while paying what the workers ask, then you don't have anyone to blame but yourself.

Why is it that the robber barons always swear by private contracts when they are big and strong and the employees are small, unorganized and weak, and start whining when the employees take the obvious step of banding together to gain negotiating power ?

What goes around, comes around.

Re:Well...

[dresgarcia]

Its all BS, the two best(and most respected) sysadmins at my company are 35 and 40. The rest of us youngins look upt o them.

Re:Well...

[sumdumass]

Wait until your company decides to start going in another direction with the next "best" technology.

When some fresh PHB, fresh from a marketing camp for the next best way of doing things (other words cause some sales man just told him how great this other way is) steps in and decides that the company is being held back by slow outdated technology. Your experienced and most respected sysadmins will soon fall into the "over qualified" and "unable to chage" category. Not because of fact or truth but because of a lack of technical understanding and the new direction the company is going. Even you will probally become buffalo'ed into believing it too.

This won't happen because it is actually true but, because the PHB believes someone's "promis of profit from swamp land in florida" sales pitch. Of couse your senior sysadmins will see clear thru this and now be seen as " holding the company back from a great profit potential".

Now any resitstance to the new buffalo gold scheme will be bad and they will lose thier job. Most senior system administrator jobs are already filled and they will probally need to take a job at a lower position to remain active in the field. Most likley thier qualification will demand more money then they are going to be offered and will be seen as a risk to the new hiring company worried about employee retention and the investment they take in training (for thier systems).

Now you have an overqualified person that can't get a job. It isn't somethign that happens because the industry moves but rather because of the actions of a couple unqualified persons in a too powerfull positions. I could tell you lots of stories about the effect sales people have on PHBs and how this exact scenario works out.

Overtime?

[G27 Radio]

You mean we were supposed to be getting overtime before? I don't ever remember getting paid overtime in the last ten years.

100k

[thebra]

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.

Don't you wish you were blue collar?

[FFFish]

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.

getting $100k/year hourly?

[gevmage]

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.

What about SB 88?

[Mr.Surly]

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.

Math troubles?

[pknoll]

Computer employees are not guaranteed overtime pay if they make $455 a week, or if their hourly rate is $27.63.

$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?

Re:This is new how?

[Jhon]

This is true. I received overtime until last year when I got an "offer" to go salary. I cant complain, they took my previous years base pay + all the over time I made and added an additional $15k/year and asked if I would go salary for that. Thinking "Hell yes!", I said "Hmmm... sounds reasonable -- let me talk it over with my family". Took the offer, of course.

With a few exectpions, I can walk out on my job at the drop of a hat and pick up where I left off in the evening. Of course, there's the off 2am page/alert that has me up and at work -- or once I had to walk out of an amusement park and return to work -- but it's a fair trade, imho (and MINE is all that matters to me).

-jhon

Re:PHBs...

[secolactico]

The title has nothing to do this. It's about white collar workers in general.

Oddly, it also includes funeral directors and embalmers.

Re:"New" rule?

[bc90021]

Well, I work for a tech company, and they expect me to work sixty hours a week too... the only difference is that I don't. I work the forty. At 5pm, I get up, pack my computer, and leave.

It's that simple. I'm not getting paid overtime, so I'm not doing overtime. Granted, I'm "on call" once every other week, so I get woken up sometimes, but frankly, I just don't understand why people think they have to do that extra 20 hours. Do they give you more money? Do they come over and help clean your apartment? No. So why do it for them?

They are providing you a job, and as long as you do that job, then "expectations" are just that.

"Salaried" usually equals "hourly" anyways

[four12]

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...

Re:I don't get it

[The Clockwork Troll]

The hourly figure applies to part time workers.

If they didn't state it that way, then someone could hold down 3 16 hr./week jobs that paid $27/hr., work 10 extra hours at each and effectively subvert the overtime rule.

Re:Damn...

[hoggoth]

> How does it help to be self-employed? This means you work extra hours for the same pay.

I've been self-employed for over three years now. It's a lot of work, and I spend as much time selling my services as actually doing the work I enjoy. However every time I see an opportunity for an employee position it's for less money than I'm making now and usually includes a long commute.

No thanks.
I'll be my own boss, make more money, and work from my home office.
Yeah, sometimes I may have to work late at night when my family goes to sleep, but at lunch I go jump on the trampoline with my kids. Fair trade-off.

Re:"New" rule?

[LostCluster]

Reminds me of the rumored Microsoft tactic of hiring two people for one job, with the knowledge that one of them would be fired at the end of the first year. The result is that the two would end up working many hours of unpaid overtime that management doesn't even have to ask for in order to get ahead of their rival.

I'm not quite sure that's the kind of environment where I'd want to struggle to keep the job...

As the market fundamentalists like to say...

[composer777]

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.

Alberta

[decipher_saint]

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).

Re:How do you like Bush now?

[Control Group]

Oh, come off it. IF your overtime is worth getting paid extra for, then don't do it unless you get paid extra for it. We're not talking about Standard Oil, here, we're talking about every business out there that needs software development. We don't need a union, we need to decide what conditions we're willing to work under, and then only accept jobs that meet them.

And yes, I say this as a worker in IT who was worked in a union shop. It sucked. I would rather have the opportunity to get paid bonuses and comp time, like I do now, than trade all that away for a guaranteed fixed raise every year regardless of performance, up to a hard cap that can't be exceeded no matter how important I become.

Not having a law mandating overtime pay isn't "fucked up repugnant shit," it's allowing small businesses like the one I work for to get on their feet. When we were just starting, hell yes, we put in a metric fuckton of overtime, and I didn't get "paid" for it. But I got quarterly (sometimes monthly) bonuses in the four-figure range, and managers often brought in stacks of free pizza on late nights. And even the occasional half barrel of beer. If they had had to pay time and a half for every employee, none of that would have happened.

So get off your high horse. If you need a law to get yourself adequately (in your mind) compensated for your time, maybe your time isn't worth as much as you think it is.

Re:If you don't get paid for something

[Frymaster]

I know of a store near where i live

ah yes, anecdotal "evidence".

what your story tells me is that the store in question attempted to punish its workers for organizing. the result was because of the vindictive nature of management.

i think that management needs to realize some things when faced with unionization:

1. they sign contracts with suppliers and distributors because if they didn't, no one would do business with them. labour is no different. negotiate in good faith, reach an agreement and everything runs fine - just like in the rest of the business world!
2. labour is who made them rich in the first place. empty factories, unused computers and fallow land don't make anyone any money. these resources only become valuable when people use them! and we call those people "workers". in the capitalist system, owners make money by getting a worker to generate x dollars worth of value and paying them less than x. in return, owners provide jobs for works. in theory, it's a symbiotic relationship.

   of course when things like demands for free overtime start happening, the relationship doesn't look so symbiotic any more. unions are about addressing that.

Unions != Good Thing

[Unnngh!]

The whole reason that unions were set up in the U.S. for blue collar workers was that employees were being treated unfairly by their employers. As individuals, they did not have any power to change things, and were forced to either live under hard working conditions or be without a job.

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.

Re:Unions != Good Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?"

Sure, I'd love to get paid twice as much for doing half the work!

Some other post I saw someone said they wouldn't want the government to mandate time and half since maybe they can negotiate a contract for it on their own. (without a union? dream on, the 90s are over) Anyways, why would you oppose the government mandating something in your favor?!

IT workers are so naive about labor and capitalism and everything else it looks like wages will have to hit 20k a year or so before these idiots wake up and smell the class war.

Bah, I don't care, actually I look forward to gloating with a big fat "I told you so" when all your jobs are overseas and you are getting paid diddly squat.

Re:No reason to thank the unions

[Nematode]

The post to which you're replying was talking about unions and collective bargaining, not federal wage and hour laws.

The presence of union means very little except that management is obliged to bargain with it in good faith. If a company can't afford higher salaries and benefits, it can present its case during the contract negotiations. It's not hard to grasp that there is a point beyond which employers cannot afford certain demands, and it's counterproductive for unions to insist on such bargains.

The presence of a union gives employees the right to have management bargain with them in good faith. It does not guarantee higher wages, shorter hours, longer vacations, or even the creation of a collective bargaining agreement itself. It's not a particularly significant intrusion on a free employment market, since the protections are basically all procedural and not substantive.

Re:If you don't get paid for something

[Perl-Pusher]

Of course then, the managers will start displaying maps of India. For the same reason they displayed maps of Mexico in factories in the 1990's!

Then employees can start wearing NRA insignia. Personally, I find it amazing that some employee that has been outsourced hasn't assassinated a high profile supporter of outsourcing such as HP CEO Carly Fiorina. It's either an amazing show of judgement and restraint by the employees. Or lack of will and resignation of the fact that these people will always be able to walk all over you. I haven't decided which.

Re:It's not new - for salary workers

[bjarvis354]

Just to throw my personal perspective into the mix. I am also a salaried employee and currently, I *do* get overtime. I have a union contract that defines many conditions where I am paid OT as a supervisor. I work past those limits, I get an extra 1/6th of my salary (our work week is defined as a 6 day week).

The men and women who I supervise are hourly get ~$30/hour and get OT as well.

In closing: IMHO Unions are good.

anti-union bias?

[ndunn]

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.

Re:anti-union bias?

[captbob2002]

A union is not some outside force that comes in and does things for you. The leadership of your union is made up from people that members of the union elect. You don't like the way your union operates, run for a leadership position. Don't like how contracts are negotiated - get on the negotiation team. Contract negotiation is a real eye-opening experience for BOTH sides.

I know that at my workplace being in a union has improved our situation. Professional staff were treated like dirt until we unionized. We were the last group to form a union, the campus already had several unions for other areas. Forming a union was the reaction to poor managment.

At least until your job goes byebye

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"New" rule?

[Suidae]

Sounds like a variation on the Prisoners' Dilemma.

I wonder if the alleged Microsoft managers actually understood the strategy.

Re:AFL-CIO story

[Jason Hood]

Crap I thought all the slashdot socialists and commies would be happy with this.

The intent of the overtime cutback is so that their will be more jobs available and so that the government wont be wasting as much money. Instead of paying some people 1.5-2x their regular rate in overtime, the government and its contractors can hire more people. Studies have repeatedly shown that over-working employees over time greatly reduces both the quality and quantity of their work.

I have worked for the government in an IT department. People 35 years old had retirement day counters on their desks. Yeah no joke, they dont care. They would surf the web all day long and work 2 hours extra everyday so their take home was greater. You can't fire them, you cant motivate them and you have to promote them. Go work for the government and see for yourself.

Before you jump on the Bush sucks, right-wing sucks bandwagon try and find out why this proposal was created. At the minimum you can at least see what "the enemy" is thinking.

Unions are there to screw you

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[caseydk]

Why don't we just tell the government to get their damn hands out of it in the first place?

I have a salaried job now that doesn't get me overtime. I have had hourly contract jobs in the past that don't give overtime, but pay for the actual hours worked.

Shifting from contract jobs to a salaried position meant that I had a significant paycut and unpaid overtime (like everyone else in the field), but it offered stability.

If you want to be compensated for working more than 40 hours, do it at a different job or get it into your contract.

Re:Get organized or get used to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you honestly think a union won't increase the speed jobs are jumping offshore, you're delusional. Unions are a necessary evil in capitalism, because they're grossly inefficient and skyrocket the cost of doing business.

Unions are for workers who are abused and underpaid - IT workers are neither. Sure, we work alot, but you're lying if you tell me you didn't know you would before you even thought about joining this business. Its the nature of what we do. And even if we don't earn as much as we did in the boom years, I don't know a single IT worker who isn't compensated more than an accountant or teacher or random office person.

Quit whining and do your job - if you don't like it, go do something else.

Pussies! Take control of your careers!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Because

[Run4yourlives]

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.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[timeOday]

That is bizarre, why are they targeting us? Why not at least base it on something less ambiguous, such as pay?

One more time... FREELANCE!!!!

[CodeGorilla]

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.

Isn't everything negotiable?

[Anonymous Coward]

- 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?

Bush's overtime changes

[forevermore]

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.

Re:"New" rule?

[bc90021]

I dispute this. "Because you'll get fired if you don't", on several levels:

1) It has been shown (studies during World War II, I recall, and think someone else mentioned) that after about 36 hours of work per week, productivity drops significantly.

2) Are you so replaceable that this is an issue? If so, you need to work harder at making yourself indispensable. For all the system administrators that are out there, I'm one of few (that my employers know of) that has a lot of Linux experience and is good with security (and certified, too).

3) Do you want to work for a company whose main goal is to be so understaffed as to need people to work 60 hours a week?

4) Do you want to work a for a company which doesn't respect its employees enough to give them an appropriate amount of time at home to have a life?

Four is an important point for me. I am amazed at the number of family people I see who work 60-70 hours a week. Granted, I understand that families require money, but families require time as well. Not only that, but when you're salaried, you don't get extra money for the extra time, so the argument that they're doing it to help support the family goes out the window!

So, make yourself more valuable, get them to show you some respect, and enjoy your work... but enjoy your life, too.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

I just came off a contract as a software engineer at a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 insurance company. The management, apparently, does not believe your statements about reduced productivity when you work too many hours in a week. All the full time (hence salaried) engineers were working well over 80 hour weeks. They would keep track of the number of hours these salaried employees worked. One of my co-workers put in over 90 hours one week and was not even in the top 10 for number of hours worked. This went on for months. If a union is required to stop this insanity, I say unionize. Those poor schlubs were beat and ill-tempered almost all the time and I can tell you they made a lot more mistakes than they should have.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[Phurd Phlegm]

Everyone I know works more than 40 hours a week and nobody gets paid overtime.

The solution to this problem is simple. Tell your prospective employer you are willing to work forty hours a week, but you're willing to negotiate more hours for higher pay. Then, when they say they expect you to work "till the job is done," tell them no.

I've found it works better expressed in terms they can relate to, e.g., "I'm just so unproductive on a long work week I end up getting less done," or "I make so many mistakes the last twenty hours I spend the next forty cleaning them up," though what's really true is "my family and my life are more important than the emergency you're too cheap to staff."

My favorite line is, "a professional works till the job is done." This is actually true, but incomplete. It should end with "and sends you a bill for every minute it took." Check with your lawyer and see if you can get a flat rate for an open-ended job.

Of course, it helps if you're good enough that even your manager can see that you're a bargain....

Timesheets

[swb]

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.

Bad for America's tech industry

[supabeast!]

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.

Good to see government's learning its place

[kmweber]

Government has no place interfering in what is a private agreement between employer and employee.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[br00tus]

Give me a break. I don't even believe that you are an IT worker, you're probably a boss and lying about it. Yaa, "tell the government to keep their damn hands off of it". Off of what, me getting paid for the time I work? Me having a social life instead of working all of the time? Chao is trying to change the rules which is government putting its damn hands all over it, putting it for the IT companies which are bankrolling the Bush campaign.

There are a million rules tying the hands of unions - Taft-Hartley, secondary strikes. Bush ordered the ILWU longershoremen on the west coast not to strike not long ago. You can bet your ass that the Bush administration is not going to keep its damn hands off of that power.

Union

[geekoid]

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.

Re:Bush administration

[cluckshot]

This is a great comment MOD this guy up! I have worked for the State of Alabama Department of Revenue Sales and Use Tax Division in the past. This will save money on collection and reward people for doing good. My Only objection to what is said here is that the Flat tax is actually worse than the current Income Tax. A National Sales Tax and you could kiss the IRS goodbye. Just don't associate the two.

Definitionally a Flat tax is the end of small business. It wipes out the deductions against Income for individuals and does not allow you to count them against your earnings as a whole. At the same time a "Flat Tax" would leave the same deductions in place for the Big Co's.

The Sales Tax taxes everybody the same. The most profound thing it does, is that it ends the tax advantages now extended to foreign (Not USA) businesses and individuals causing all players here to pay equally. It also frees US Exports from being mostly US INCOME Tax allowing us to compete in the world market. Want to watch the world scream for protection from the Americans... ? Pass the National Sales Tax and repeal any income taxes.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[op00to]

However, with our present system you can only obtain money by working. Anybody see a potential problem with this?

Better tell the IRS that, because I made money last year without working! I recieved interest on a money market account, I recieved dividends from stocks... It is unfortunate that people thing the ONLY way to make money is to work. The only result from working for a living is perhaps to be debt-free, but certainly not very wealthy once you retire. When you work for a living, you create expenses like having to own a car or buy a train ticket to commute every morning, having to buy special clothes for work, that sort of thing. Why not invest your time into buying and selling real estate? Don't have money you say? That's great! That's a better situation to be in than having some money, because you've got nothing anyone can take in case you tank. You can buy and sell wonderful imaginary things called "options" on the houses that you can't afford. Leverage your brain and your money, instead of merely slaving away to make someone else rich. Make your money work for you, so that you don't have to work. For fear of sounding too much like an informercial, I won't name any books for you to read, but if you do your homework, it is possible for anyone, with any income to buy and sell real estate. It won't happen right away, but if you're smart, you won't have to work for someone else any longer.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[caseydk]

ive me a break. I don't even believe that you are an IT worker, you're probably a boss and lying about it. Yaa, "tell the government to keep their damn hands off of it". Off of what, me getting paid for the time I work? Me having a social life instead of working all of the time? Chao is trying to change the rules which is government putting its damn hands all over it, putting it for the IT companies which are bankrolling the Bush campaign.

Are you blaming Bush for not having a social life?

Anyway, if you only want to work 40 hours a week, then start working towards that as your goal. When I first started my current job, I was at 40 hrs, which steadily drifted up to 50 hrs and it drove me nuts without additional pay.

Therefore, I've steadily decreased my hours and now I work 40-43 hrs/week.

At a Friday meeting a few weeks ago, I had three new requirements thrown at me for a nearly complete app. I told them (and my boss) that I would start on it Monday. When asked why I wouldn't start it immediately, I told them that unless I was being paid hourly, I take the weekends off.

You have to set your priorities and then live by them.

Re:whew..

[iwadasn]

While this soudns like a good idea, it probably isn't. If you don't calibrate your functions correctly you can easily have blue-sky disasters. I know it sounds like I'm making these words up, but i'm not. :-)

A blue sky disaster is where one variable explodes to infinity at a specified point in time. This is easily caused by many classes of functions where they start to feedbackon each other. In fact, keeping stability when the median income is affected by the minimum wage, which is affected by the median income, etc... is a really hard problem. Most of chaos math is based on trying to figure out when systems like this will explode. Most of them have a way of slowly working their way into a regime where they catastrophically fail.

Very similar to a ship being rocked by waves or a skyscraper pushed by wind. You have to be very careful that there are no resonances, or you have to stay very far away from the "edge" of your safe zone to avoid being pushed over or capsized.

Re:Actually, this story is WRONG

[DarkSarin]

Good for you.

My brother was in a similar position, working for the CA state maximum security prisons. They wanted to give him a promotion and put him on salary, but he had already looked around at other salaried workers and decided that it wasn't worth it--everyone on salary worked 50-60hrs with no additional pay.

The trouble with limiting overtime pay is that you must ALSO restrict overtime work and make it illegal for the company to require overtime. Then if you are asked to work it when they aren't supposed to, you very firmly say no, and document it (and tell them that you are). Then if they fire you, its time to go to court.

If people would actually do this, companies would be much more wary about asking ridiculous amounts of overtime.

I have to further note that it is unreasonable to expect people to work more than 40hrs/week. Very few are productive that many hours in one week. I agree that 30-35 should be the standard, even in positions that are essentially vigilance duty (guards, orderlies in a mental hospital, process control workers (steel plants), etc).

Fatigue and exhaustion are a nasty little set of problems, but most managers run roughshod over them, claiming that workers are lazy.

The only job that I ever had where I worked 60+ hrs was granite mining. I lost a lot of weight that summer. We got up at about 6am and were on the job at by 6:30 or 7. We went home at 7:30 or 8. We worked saturdays too. We stayed productive and we had fun (blowing things up helps keep it exciting).

Due to the location (Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah), we even got occasional bomb-threats and protestors (we were ruining some really good climbing spots, but hey the property was privately held and the owner wanted lots of granite of a very particular variety).

On the other hand I've had part-time jobs where no one was productive more than about 50% of the time, and we only worked about 20hrs/week.

It partly depends on the job, but there are a lot of jobs where 25 hrs of hard work would be enough to keep up with the work.