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.'"
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.
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.
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).
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
Can you tell that I lived in Oneonta for a while?
J
'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
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
Another astounding success in the Bush Administration's No Billionaire Left Behind program.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
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.
$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.
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
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.
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.
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...
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.
Not entirely,
Overtime is an incentive for employers to HIRE people rather than working the one's they have to death.
It is incentive which recognizes that the market if left to itself will gobble up all the dedicated people who don't have kids and can work weekends and evenings and leave the people who carry the real burden of society (yes parenthood) unemployed.
Where there is no negative pressure on expliotation - people will sign up for expliotation rather than get left behind and starve - that is a comment on world experience over time - your mileage may vary (but not by much)
AIK
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?
Man, I've worked construction. You'd pry my ergonomic mouse from my cold, pastey hand before I went back. You're just laborer, paid to break your body for someone else. The mentallity of your supervisors and coworkers is worlds apart from IT. It's a mind-numbing and spirit-crushing existance. I've been used and abused in IT too, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't even compare.
Your talk of 6-figure incomes is BS. I've know only handful of people who have done that well; it's only because they work more overtime than should be humanly possible. Every single one is an alcholic who has to pause a moment to recall how old his own kids are.
Choose wisely.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
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.
Nope. I had a professor (who I taught classes for), who asked incoming students, "How many of you are choosing this course of study because there is high demand for your talents and you'll get paid a lot of money?" No one wanted to put their hand(s) up until he really encouraged them to be honest. Roughly 60%-70% put up their hands. 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. That's a LOT of time to wait doing something you don't necessarily like just because when you started you thought there'd be a job.
[1] the Peter Principle: Everyone will rise to a level of incompetency. Basically, you'll get one promotion too many and end up in a job you are incompetent to do. He's dead now, but look up some of his books. The hold true even today.
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.
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).
WashTech is the union for computer professionals.
No. The last thing professionals need is a union interfering in their ability to negotiate their own employment terms.
This policy doesn not mean you can't be paid for overtime. It only says that your employer doesn't have to make it compaly policy to pay you for overtime.
I would imagine it would be very tough to unionize IT.
First, auto workers, airline pilots, factory labour, etc. tend to work for a small number of companies with high fixed costs. There are IT people in every company, making negotiations and organization difficult.
Second, IT is a very diverse group. Tech support, code monkeys, developers, systems analysts/architects, network admins, management that still does code reviews/coding, etc. It's difficult to lump those positions together, or draw distinctive lines between all of them.
Third, skill as a programmer depends a lot on natural talent, and there's a lot of ego involved. There are lots of really gifted individuals who would rightfully object to being grouped in with people who took a six month course at the local community college.
Fourth, some of us are a lot more worried about our jobs than others. If you're doing helpdesk tech support you should be very worried. If you're spending most of your time meeting with users in person and doing design for a profitable company you're a lot harder to outsource, and have much more job security.
Since the promotion ladder in most businesses eventually winds up in management no matter where you start, I'd suggest that the Peter Principle only strictly applies to those who started out in management. For everybody else, the effect is the same but the cause is that you got kicked from a job you like and are suited for into one very much unlike what you signed up to do and have been doing for years.
What happened is that you started (perhaps involuntarily) a new career at the same business, without any formal education. "Incompetent", while strictly true, carries a shade of meaning that isn't really fair. Imagine that your high school just got you a job as a sysadmin without ever offering any computing classes.
Now, I would agree heartily that if you are training for a career in X mainly because of the money, you are probably seeking the wrong job and you won't like it much.
BTW, those guys doing the same job every day for the next 30 years? those jobs are the ones now being outsourced to another continent. Stay flexible if you want to continue working.
(As for that "overqualified" jazz, I'm reminded of Art Buchwald's story about a nuclear physicist named Kase who kept dumbing down his resume' until he landed a job.)
Unions aren't designed for the benefit of the whole only the benefit of their members. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if your in the union but if your not, good luck finding a job.
I may be presuming too much but I would think that a computer professional is likely smart enough to negotiate their own contract. If you aren't getting paid enough or you haven't negotiated an overtime scale than that's your fault. 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.
I totally understand that market forces may be such that computer professional salaries are low due to over supply in the market. Artificially increasing the salary through unionization won't benefit you in the long run. Already I see people here complaining about off-shoring. Just wait until you have a union, the jobs will bolt like there's no tomorrow.
The best way to fight an over supply in your field is to train for a different field! Or simply be the best in your field.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
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!
I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) what's happened with unions so that they've gotten out of control.
And I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) that not joining a union will make gremlins fly out of your nose, make your wife/girlfriend/right hand leave you for a football jock and besides the unions will give your name to the Mafia and you'll be lucky if they only break your kneecaps.
I swear that's exactly what it said - only I can't remember exactly which book it was. It certainly was enlightening though.
Back on topic: of course there's going to be bad eggs in unions and some of them probably have got out of control. Guess what - there's employers like that as well. I'd rather have those unions there and employers realising that they can't gouge me quite so hard because my co-workers are willing to back me up. Politics goes where there's power, and I for one am glad that unions have enough power to influence things (while hopefully not gaining so much power that the bad apples take over - I think that's what you're talking about. Surprise, it happens everywhere with power, including politics in general if you haven't been following along at home).
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.
If reading slashdot is any indicator IT people hate unions. Don't expect one anytime soon.
Maybe it would be more palatable if you did not call it a union. Call is an "association" like the doctors (AMA) and the lawyers (ABA) do. It does not seem so low class when you call your union an association. After all the people in unions drive chevys people in associations drive BMWs.
evil is as evil does
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.
But if you were part of such a union, you'd have a say in it. History seems to show (though I'm neither a historian nor in a union, so I'm not exactly an expert...) that unionized workers can, on the whole, get better employment terms than non-unionized workers. That's not to say that you, with your mad negotiating skills (which you may or may not possess; just an example) can't negotiate a better contract, just that for the majority of workers, the contract the union can get them is better than the one they could get on their own.
I've also heard some pretty stupid stuff that unions have done. However, a union is neither better nor worse than the people who make it up--which means that at worst, it can be a royal nuisance to the people in it and outright dangerous to the people not in it, employees and employers both. But you can always try to change it once it's there. Without it there, we won't have nearly as much clout as a group.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
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!
I just asked my manager about this. He said
"That guy is full of shit. The Peter Principle is shit. And... (sniffle) well... (tearing up) Oh my God I hate my job and my life. I wish I were back to being a Technician instead of a manager!"
Hm.
Off to console him.
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
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.
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.
Back on topic: of course there's going to be bad eggs in unions and some of them probably have got out of control. Guess what - there's employers like that as well.
More to the point, unionization is the corrollary to incorporation.
Corporations exist for one purpose: to protect and increase the profits of their shareholders. Unions exist for one purpose: to protect the jobs and compensation of their members. NEITHER has any direct interest in the consumer's environment; they only will improve things for consumers to the extent that such actions help achieve their primary goals.
Yet, somehow being profit-motivated is darn near sacred in this country, while unions are evil because they raise wages (and therefore cut into profit margins). I think there should be a better solution, but we haven't found it yet... so for the time being, I definitely support unions as a countermeasure to corporations. (Which doesn't mean I support every union's every action blindly; people make bad decisions. There are also corps that do *good* things, though.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
What makes you think that you will still be in a position to bargain for better terms from here out? If your job is seen as a commodity, how can you differentiate yourself in a way that will allow you to negotiate these terms? Unionization is a reflection of the maturity of an industry. It also does not require that anyone working in the field be a Union member, it simply means that having a Union is in the best interest of the majority of the workers in that industry or with that specific job. Software development has been around for over 30 years as a job. Auto workers saw their job mature in about 50 years. I would argue that the Software industry is simply maturing and the thought of Unions is something US software engineers should research and consider.
It's no different that trying to get a better price by buying in bulk at Sam's Club. Unions help to insure that workers do not take the brunt of volatility in a mature market. I don't recommend Unionizing new industries as soon as they show up. Individualism and laissez faire policies tend to help new industries, but can actually stop the formation of new industries around old ones.
There is no such thing as a free market in reality. There are always going to be factors that make the market non-free, reason says that you should find the best way to work within the system that exists. Unions, like Corporations, are simply a tool to better organize resources within society. Planned economies don't work, but lack of regulation can make a commoditized industry too volatile to build new industries on top of. How could you build a chip fab if there wasn't a stable and relatively inexpensive source of energy and pool of workers to run it?
Does this mean that this country's experience with Unions has been all roses? No, but neither has our experience with Corporations, yet lot's of people join Corporations, although the Corporation's alligiance is more to shareholders than workers. If you think of a Union as a Corporation who's shareholders are the members and who's customers are the Corporations the shareholders work for, it seems much more natural.
I personally think that this country has done a very good job of exploring the capabilities of capitalism and laissez faire policies. I also think that the progress and complexity of the economy and society we have built with these tools may need other tools and new tools to continue it's growth.
I like Roosevelt's VP Henry Wallace's quote: "Freedom in a grown-up world is different from freedom in a pioneer world. As a nation grows and matures, the traffic inevitably gets denser, and you need more traffic lights."
The idea is to strike balances so as to better the country as a whole without stepping on the rights of individuals. If the eletrical and telecom industries had not matured, it would have been much harder to develop the industries that are built on top of them.
Other countries understand these principles, especially India. That's why the rest of the world standardized on GSM (via regulation) in the cell phone world and why there are more applications, more widely available for cell users in the rest of the world. This country lost it's leadership in the cell industry, because it refused to mature the industry and grow new ones on top of it.
If you want to see the US continue the growth it has had, then we must be intelligent and rational about the tools we use to manage it. Capitalism vs. Socialism is a dead argument. Now we must compete with other countries who aren't still bound to the ideological struggles of the last century. Unions and mature industries are just part of the toolbox. If you don't like the way Unions have been run in the past, think about how you would do it in the future. Would an equivelent of the SEC for Unions help? What model of collective bargaining for labor would best reflect the types of jobs that are currently being commoditized?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
"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).
Who is John Cabal?
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.
Wow.
Some really appaling economics failures in this post.
Let's start with:
"Employers have ALWAYS sought to hire the least amount of people possible. The idea that allowing them to treat their employees like shit will change has no basis in reality."
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. If I have to hire three times as many people, it costs me more than $20 to make it now, so no way am I selling it to you for that. The only people who benefit from that are the extra workers, who are effectively being paid to do nothing, since they add no value above the original staff. Forcing someone to pay you when you aren't giving them value in return is theft.
Your problem is you have this mental image of these magical corporate vaults that just fill themselves with money, and the corporations horde it all. With that as your standard, it's no wonder theft seems appealing. But that vision just isn't true. They're filling that vault by charging YOU for their products. If you rob their vault, they're just going to charge you more. The way to make things better isn't to steal harder or faster, it's to work in good faith with the corporation to make the system as efficient as possible. In free trade, both parties profit. Parasites only profit until their host dies or fights back.
Another, more glaring flaw:
"Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour."
First of all, if it was true that there was an oversupply of labor, and that it was causing the price to head towards zero, then it must be heading there really slowly, or else it would be there already. As you state, employment has never been 100%, so the market adjustment you predict seems to be taking longer than all recorded human history.
The reality is that "labor" isn't a single commodity like pork or lumber. Not all labor is the same. You can't fire the Chief of Neurosurgery and replace him with the $5.15/hour guy.
Lastly:
"If employers actually hired people when the price of labor was low to non-existant, then why haven't they hired all of the Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour?"
1) Because there aren't actually that many Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour, especially over the age of 17.
2) Because the unions and the minimum wage laws will try to prevent you from hiring people for $3/hour.
3) Because you have to create the jobs for them to be hired into. This isn't something that should be done by politicians (though they usually claim to do it). This has to be done by corporations, be they large or individual startups, and it requires that they have access to surplus money. Right now they're spending that surplus on the three guys doing one guy's job, two of whom are on break.
Like someone else did earlier, I'll call bullshit on this.
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.
Just as a little personal example... I make a bit mroe than 28K a year, but less than 100K a year. I'll leave a little wiggle room in there for your imaginations. Last year, thanks to George W's tax cuts, I had to pay less income tax. Net savings was approx 300. Thanks!
But wait. Because W wasn't done yet, oh no sir. He lowered the amount of interest I pay on my student loans that I could deduct on my taxes. Net loss to me, approx 740. Apparently getting a (very slight) break on the interest of your student loans is too much to ask for. Thanks!
So thanks to George, I'm paying about 340 more than I did before, our deficit is through the roof, and it doesn't seem things will get better. If Kerry wants to raise taxes on people who make over 200K, and reset it so we middle class folks get our real advantages back while losing those superficial advantages, god bless him and good luck in November.
You will get paid what the market decides you are worth.
It's an employers market. Which means you will pretty much be paid crap if you quit. Employers know this; Congress knows this; the President knows this. In fact, it's pretty much the reason that all of this crap is able to happen: workers are far too busy working extra hours to keep from being canned to worry about being politically active. They have mortgages/rents to pay and kids (or at least themselves) to feed.
In the times to come, I predict that the worker will be increasingly squeezed. I mean, productivity has gone through the roof, but jobs have consistently been going down. What does this mean? It means that companies need to higher fewer people, which means that for each person working, they know that there are 10 people out there who want his/her job. So that person will work harder, won't ask for a raise, and certainly won't try to upset an employer by pointing out that s/he isn't being paid overtime.
In fact, we have a situation similar to the end of the 19th Century, with thousands of workers clamoring for factory jobs and being willing to stand for ungodly working conditions and low pay because the alternative was no job at all. The *only* thing keeping it from being that bad is *NOT* market forces, but rather a whole slew of governmental regulations that make sure a worker has acceptable working conditions. Those laws were passed as a result of political action by the labor movment. Tragically, the labor movement has now lost a great deal of it strength and credibility. We do need a similar movement however, to protect the rights of the workers and to re-assert the main goal of the United States: not to support the making of money and protections of corporations, but rather the livelihood and freedoms of its populace.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour.
This incorrectly presupposes that the lack of a 100% employment rate coincides with an oversupply of labor. It's generally understood in economics that a significant amount of unemployment is due to unavoidable due to frictional unemployment (day-to-day changes in a dynamic, changing economic system in which old industries die and new ones are born, in which people get tired of old jobs and old bosses, in which bosses find work of subordinates unsatisfactory, and in which new people enter and others reenter the labor force), and partially unavoidable due to structural unemployment.
Furthermore, you're implicitly assuming that the "employers" and "employees" come from 2 perfectly distinct pools and that no one goes from employee to employer (nice hidden communist ideology in your post). This is false. In a free capatlist society someone who is working as an employee or is unemployed can start up their own buisness, creating more jobs and oppertunities (increasing the demand in the labor market) while simultaneously removing himself from the market (decreasing supply). The effect of these forces leads to a dynamic balance where the employment number fluctuates accordingly with the state of the whole economy.