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EA Reconsiders Overtime Position
bippy writes "An internal memo leaked from EA to its employees says that the company plans to make more employees elgible for overtime. Rusty Rueff, senior vice president of human resources, bemoans the bad press and begs forgiveness: "As much as I don't like what's been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth." GamesIndustry.biz has commentary on the story as well.
People working in the Entertainment Industry are elgible for payed overtime.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Bingo! One of Murphy's Laws of Software Development States: "adding more programmers to a late project makes it later". Also read "The Mythical Man Month" and "Death March". Good software management is NOT easy, thats why there is so much poor management. Just telling the lead programmer he is now the project manager is not the way to do it. Technically EA does not have to pay OT or they would have been sued by now. What they MAY do is pay for the extra time but not at 1.5X and maybe not for everyone. It's mostly a PR stunt, they might do it for one project, get the heat off, and then go back to the old way.
some links for the google deficient:
from http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/WageOrderIndustries.htm
order number 4. That's the one posted in our breakroom.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/IWCArticle4.html
Look under 1 A 3 (h) and (i)
Enjoy.
"Piter, too, is dead."
It doesn't matter how skilled you are as a laborer if there are a great many more laborers who are willing and able to do your job. Unskilled laborers are always in that situation, but if you are a game developer or investment banker, you still face the same buyers market as people with the skills to be hired are pouring out colleges much faster than they are being absorbed by the jobs market. So to that extent, the analogy to coal mining or textiles holds.
It's not like you could feed your family just by giving up on skilled labor and going to work in the "coal mines" of unskilled labor (fast food, I guess)! Then you'd be competing in an even larger pool of applicants.
Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it invalid. Coal miners are symbolic of a specific upheaval in labor-capital relations that was a part of industrial revolution. We're living through a new revolution now, one that's faster and global. So far, workers are losing, and if problems like this don't get solved, you should expect another upheaval that makes the wildcat cole miner strikes look like a tea party.
Civil disobedience isn't just an act of illegality that happens to be popular. It's an act of educational confrontation. You want the public to squirm as they see dogs set on peaceful protesters. You want them to be uncomfortable when their neighbors and relatives are jailed for acs of conscience.
Secretly violating the law to line your pocket doesn't qualify. Civil disobedience is public defiance of injustice. Acts of private venality don't qualify.
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