Programmer Sues VU Games Over Excessive Work Hours

eToychest writes "According to Reuters, a video game programmer has sued Vivendi Universal Games, claiming he and his colleagues were regularly forced to work extra hours and denied overtime pay. The suit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, is one of many filed against companies in the state in recent months, as employees seek to be classified as overtime-eligible to obtain compensation for working more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. The suit seeks payment of back overtime wages plus other damages. This comes the recent announcement that the company said it would cut more than one-third of its staff, excluding Blizzard. Of the things mentioned in the suit, the complaints include no overtime compensation, and employees being ordered to falsify timesheets to indicate they worked shorter days." This report is especially interesting in light of the recent IGDA 'Quality Of Life' survey for game developers.

Comments

the problem is...

[thebdj]

Many times when this occurs the employees in question are salaried employees. People who make a flat monthly rate are a bit harder to pay overtime for than your standard hourly employee. Also you will find that places will usually explain to those people that they may be required to work extra hours and perform overtime and this is usually seen in their pay.

Something I would really like to know is if any employers actually pay their salaried workers a bit more knowing they will have to work overtime or if they manage ways to pay overtime or give them extra time off for working the overtime. While quitting may not always be an option as finding a replacement job is not always easy, it is still available as a way to get out of these types of bad situations.

In reality it may come down to forcing states to once again rework labor laws. Since in almost every state salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay they can become slave labor and while some companies may seemingly be able to get away with this, it isn't good for the people they have working for them. While removing the exemption may cost some companies more money, the smart ones will simple hire more workers to lower the overtime load since that would be cheaper than paying someone to work 60+ hours a week every week.

Re:the problem is...

[mkohel]

If I recall my employment law class correctly, just being salaried is not enough to make you exempt from overtime. Of course this probably differs state to state. Heres a link http://www.ewin.com/articles/exneot.htm

If an employee does not meet even one of the criteria, he or she is not exempt (non-exempt) from the provisions of the law. ....

Exempt Professional Employees are those employed in a bona fide professional capacity whose primary work requires knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired through a prolonged course of intellectual instruction and study, as distinguished from a general academic education and from training in the performance of routine mental, manual or physical processes;

and/or work that is original and creative in character in a recognized field;

and whose work requires discretion or judgment in its performance; and work which is predominantly intellectual and varied in character and is of such character that the output produced cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time;

and who does not devote more than 20% of his time to nonexempt activities;

and who is compensated at the rate of $1,150 a month.

Re:the problem is...

[DeadEye]

What I've often been told (and I am a game programmer working on a major PS2 title) is that "the compensation for your overtime was built into your salary". Of course, they only tell you that after it becomes an issue, not when you are negotiating contracts. In the end, it's the video game industry, and as much as people would like to compare the video game industry with the movie industry, one thing they actually have in common is that they simply would not be possible without the dedication and passion the developers put into them. There is nothing particularly smart or revolutionary about the business end of those industries, it's all in the "little" people who actually do the work. Long story short, you have to want to do it, and it will be hell at times.

As a european to the americans, O_O

[SmallFurryCreature]

I can't believe some of the posts. You are not paid to work 40 hours you are paid to get a job done? What the fuck?

Imagine this attitude in a factory. You are charged with screwing X into Y and half way down your shift something somewhere breaks and the entire line grinds to a hault. Well obviously lost production, what happens then in america or according to these posters? You don't get paid? You have to work unpaid overtime to make up for the lost time?

All I can say is thank god for unions in europe then, real unions.

There are basically 3 kinds of jobs

• Pure per hour work, think plumbers and such. No such thing as overtime. Imagine if that was true, your plumber could just charge you 100% extra saying he was on overtime :)
• basic worker, you get a X hour contract and are expected to do your job during those hours minus breaks. Extra hours get paid extra.
• Fixed pay, higher positions can have this. Anyone from movie stars to directors get a fixed amount but are supposed to do the job that needs to be done regardless of hours.

It is up to the boss to ensure in all cases that the person they employ actually performs as desired during the working hours but if there is simply to much work for the number of hours then this is not the problem of the employee in the first two salary situations.

Of course now the questions is where these programmers belong. Are they no different from a person working the assembly line or are they a director level employee.

Funny thing is that despite huge differences in working attitude around the world it seems impossible to say wich way is the right way. Japan was at one time a leader and look at them now. America had the assembly line and the highly paid worker with a car and freestanding house but recent news stories suggest america is no longer able to keep that up either.

Europe is to fragmented to make any real conslusions. My own country holland is amazingly well balanced with work in every field from farming to high tech stuff so we tend to feel fluctuations less then say detroit in the US when the car market shifted (we lost daf cars and it was news but it means a few thousand job losses not an entire city going down the shitter).

Re:What is wrong with these people?

[Colazar]

How you can be a non-exempt programmer is beyond me, but that's a different issue.

There's a checklist on conditions that you have to meet to be exempt (which I don't remember all of off the top of my head), but the gist of it boils down to this: you can't be exempt unless you have control.

To be exempt you really have to be a manager (supervise other people) or have near-complete control over how and when you do your job. It is very difficult to *compell* overtime from an exempt employee--it may end up being necessary logistically to get the job done, but that is employee's decision, *not* the employer's. Special circumstances can over-ride this, of course, but if there are "special circumstances" a good percentage of the time, then those circumstances aren't really very special anymore, and the job has probably been mis-classified.

Glad Someone Has Finally Done This

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked for a bunch of game companies including Origin, Ion Storm, and elsewhere. And I'm here to tell you, they are _not_ fun: they are the equivalent of 19th century sweatshops. Most places I worked, myself and other programmers routinely turned in 80-100 work weeks -- not because we were excited or invested in our job, but because we were told point blank that we would be fired otherwise. There is practically _no_ compensation. Most managers sneer at the idea of comp days, and the number of folks who've received bonuses or royalties that equalled the amount of time they put into a project is pretty minimal.

Managers, of course, come and go as they please and don't seem to understand why everyone is so unhappy with the situation. Because, well, isn't this a fun place to work? Don't they buy you dinner when you stay late and take you to see that "Star Wars" film? And hey, you get to have action figures on your desk! The fact that your hourly pay works out to be less than the guys in QA is never mentioned.

And to that guy who thinks that this is just the price you pay in order to take off on Friday and "play golf," you're obviously misinformed. No one gets to say "Hey, I'm done for the day, how about a round of frisbee?"; if you don't have work to do, you're instructed to find work to do.

If the joy of making computer games allows you to overlook these issues, then honestly, more power to you. But to act like this guy is somehow biting the hand that feeds him is simply uninformed and ludicrous. I have no idea how the legal rulings will play out, but I wish him all the best. Maybe if one of these companies gets scared, then the rest will preemptively adapt normal business practices (like just about everywhere else), act like grown-ups, and then they really might be fun places to work.
--
Lewis