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Activision Sued For Unpaid Overtime
In the wake of EA's employee settlement, Activision finds itself in a suit for much the same reason. Next Generation reports: "Activision's Computer Graphics employees, who work many overtime hours to produce Activision's profitable videogames, fully deserve to be paid all the overtime compensation to which they are entitled under the law ... Excessive overtime is endemic in the videogame industry, but we hope that this and other lawsuits will spur major changes in the way employers treat their employees."
So Activision still exists? Didn't they make Pitfall?
The entire notion of unpaid overtime is complete bollocks.
It's bad for the employee, since they can be taken advantage of.
It's bad for the company, since it provides a method to ameilorate poor planning by providing unpaid labour, thus badly weakening one of the main incentives to plan properly - COST.
Companies like unpaid overtime in the same way drug addicts like their fix; it feels good ("phew, project saved!") which in fact being terribly harmful.
As for changing the attitude of employers, it's not likely to happen. Employers enjoy getting as much work for as little outlay as they can, and once they burn people out they feel no qualms about getting rid of "the deadweight".
... a titanic intellect in a world of icebergs...
If you are in a salaried position then you don't get overtime. Period. If you take a job with a contract involving completing a project in 18 months for $40k/yr then you are going to finish the project for $60k regardless of how many hours you work in those 18 months. The other side of this coin is getting better control of your time off (short and long term). If you don't like this then take an hourly position, duh.
This simply isn't true across the board. In the city I live in, a salaried woman sued her employer for a crapload of unpaid overtime and won. Even though her contract specified she would not get paid for OT, she won the case.
Normally, if you signed such a contract, it would be under the assumption that overtime would be infrequent. Employers then take advantage of you and work you 9 hours a day if they like.
Score one for the working stiff!
Except that in our industry, the only hourly positions are contract jobs. It would be quite amusing to see the big names fall like dominos if all the good guys did turn contractor overnight, and suddenly charge what they were actually worth to the company rather than what was offered when they signed up, but for now, the "market forces" make this unlikely.
That doesn't mean that the practice of saying someone's on salary and so should work unlimited hours is ethical. Indeed, many countries have laws that outright ban the practice, because the only people who think it's a good idea are incompetent managers.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
True. I also don't work it. You want me to work more than 40 hours a week, and its not because I made a mistake that caused the overtime? Find some other patsy, I'm not that stupid. Salaried does not mean the company owns our lives.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
If you take a job with a contract involving completing a project in 18 months for $40k/yr then you are going to finish the project for $60k regardless of how many hours you work in those 18 months.
The lesson here is not to take any such contracts that lack provisions for any kind of project overrun.
If the requirements change halfway through the project, and it throws schedules off to the point where it's going to take 24 months to finish it instead of 18, or will require me to work 70-hour weeks instead of 40-50 hour weeks, I will require additional compensation, and my employer is going to be aware of that from the outset.
In some places it's nearly impossible to work hourly in the tech field. The real problem with unpaid overtime with salaried employees is that it generates abuse. A project sets an arbitrary deadline that can't be met. Tech-worker joe never saw the plan, never could contest the estimates, never sees a proper scope set for the work to be done; scope creaps, estimates are ignored and the plan is thrown out the window. But that's ok, everyone will work 60 hours a day for 2 weeks so a Project Manager can hit his bonus.
It's not fair, it's not right but it is legal and it really sucks for those folks who have an aptitude in this field.
Oh and don't get me started on how this is keeps new jobs from being formed because so many people are getting overworked.
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Bollocks. If you take an exempt salary position which has a specific legal definition then yes they don't have to pay overtime. however there are a lot of salried positions that don't actually qualify as exempt in which case overtime pay is mandated. Check your contract or discuss this with an employment lawyer to determine if you are truely in an exempt category.
EA: Hmmm...India is looking better and better every year...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
I don't think so.
y /fs17a_overview.htm
First, according to the USL's FLSA, "**most** employees in the United States be paid [...] overtime pay at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek."
Also, there are only 5 categories of jobs that are exempt from overtime. Just this week, I know my employer illegally classified me as exempt.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpa
The law - and the courts - have said otherwise. Abusive contract provisions are not enforceable, and are routinely struck down in cases like this.
There is a difference between salaried and salaried exempt, after all. Were you aware of this?
As a general rule (and it varies somewhat by state, though the feds set minimum standards), to be salaried exempt (without the exempt, you are very explicitly entitles to overtime), you must be one of the following:
1) A regulated professional (as in, your profession is regulated by some government agency as to your competence).
2) A manager - that means you must have subordinates, and you must spend at least half your time supervising them (among other restrictions).
3) An executive - which means you get very broad discretion in how you do your job.
4) A computer professional (who meets specific criteria in the labor code) who makes a minimum amount per week (which varies rather a lot by state (in California, for example, the minimum is the equivalent of $47.81 per hour, or nearly $100,000 a year).
If you meet one of those criteria, you may legally be salaried exempt. Otherwise, regardless of what your contract says, you may not legally be classsified as salaried exempt.
Of course, all this applies only to employees. What I would expect Activision to claim is that these folks are contract labor, but that can get mighty complicated, too. Microsoft got hit a few years ago on the same thing, and lost, despite what they thought were bulletproof contracts.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Activision is paying taxes for these people, which will definitely make them employees, not contractors.
(I am not a lawyer, and laws vary by state. If this matters to you, you'd have to be an idiot to not consult a qualified labor attorney local to you.)
FYI: Federal law is the same except to be classified as exempt you MUST (in all categories) make more than $23,140/y; maybe the fed should raise that. In NY, (unless my employer is breaking the law), I am currently exempt and I don't meet, $100,000 threshhold (and at my previous job I was exempt, and I only made $28k/y) /Software Engineer
Very useful info. Do you by chance have any links or keywords one would search for to gather additional info?
Are you sure about the manager idea?
I heard of banks and Walmart experimenting with the idea of making everyone a manager in name so they dont have to pay overtime.
I dont know if this is common practice but the big corps responded back by mentioning they would implement this if such overtime laws ever went into affect.
http://saveie6.com/
Yet the corps still dont get it.
The accountants are still looking at squeezing the maximum amount of productivity for the least possible cost. This means making one man do the work for two for the same price.
What they forget is that after 50 hours you get less and less work and when you approach 60 hours you get negative return.
Coding is hard and error prone. You will only spend more hours debugging the code then implementing it properly by having sane hours.
Also productivity does suffer as enough GOOD employees who actually do the work of 2 men because they are tallented quit. THis makes only the bad employees and newbies stay on which lengthens your projects longer.
Most poor managers know this and jsut ship the products with bugs or look at India.
http://saveie6.com/
The whole notion about being salaried is that you will not receive overtime pay. If you are an "exempt employee" the notion of overtime means absolutely nothing. People should know this going into jobs and be ready for it. Most jobs I have applied for as an Electrical Engineer make it quite clear that overtime is not given and that you may be required to work 50 or 60 hr weeks.
Many applications for these same jobs often ask how many hours per week you are willing to work; this is presumably used to weed out people who are totally unwilling to work overtime. My father was a salaried employee for the better part of his 20 yrs with his company and never earned OT. He was gone to work before I ever got up at 6am and wasn't home until 5pm. Did he ever complain about the long hours or lack of OT? Nope. The next thing you know these people will be unionizing (if they haven't tried already), and I will not get into my view on unions. This is absurd. The only reason people ever win these suits is because a group of 12 citizens, most of whom are probably hourly, will be like..."I get OT, don't they?" I wonder how many of these complaints are by people in their first or second jobs. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mostly those.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The whole notion about being salaried is that you will not receive overtime pay. If you are an "exempt employee" the notion of overtime means absolutely nothing.
See, that's the entire thing though. Both this, and the previous EA lawsuit on the same issue, are about video game companies inaccurately classifying non-exempt employees as exempt employees.
In other words, it's legal to make a programmer do unpaid overtime, and the lawsuit here is not complaining about that. However, graphical artists do not have the same exemption. Activision hires both programmers and graphical artists. They have to pay the graphical artists for overtime, because that is the law. They are nonexempt.
I am absolutely certain.
y /fs17a_overview.htm is a link to the Department of Labor's fact sheet on the subject.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpa
(Laws varied by state, but this is the minimum standard to protect employees.)
I would be amazed if anyone with as much money as Walmart or any bank would ever consider such a blatantly illegal scheme (though many have tried other, more subtle schemes).
If corporations tried to avoid this by making everyone a manager, it would be blatently obvious. All they have to do is ask what the employee does on a daily basis. If that employee is not directly responsible for a number of other employees, then they do not meet the definition of a "manager".
In these laws, title generally does not matter. Job duties do.
Walmart? Your kidding?
You may want to google them and use the term unethical when your bored. Walmart is also using imminent domain laws and lobbying to create new super centers. That means Walmart is just taking land away from people.
Also their headquarters was upgraded courtesy of our tax dollars of course costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Disgusting isn't it?
http://saveie6.com/
Instead, "salary" workers are often required to work a minimum number of hours (often 45 or more per week) and fill out time cards, are given a limited number of sick days, and are not allowed to work from home.
Not in california.. unless your job is primarily management or you make over 90k, you are hourly. Technically, you are non-exempt.
I ain't seeing it, is there a website to look at? Some GPS coordinates?
..well.. rank assholes. Nice employers with a fair and honest system in place are the exception, not the rule anymore, because they can get away with it. remember Wallstreet, the movie "Greed...is good!" that is their motto and how they do things now. if it means the CEO makes an extra 50 million-that is what happens. if it means the company gradually goes down the tubes-they don't care, they are in in for what they can loot-short term profit mentality.
How many times do you have to quit a job and move maybe and get another job, etc, before you notice that most employers today are
We don't have a moderation system for employers in this nation, nothing official anyway, and most states are "right to fire you because we are assholes" rule.. The government rarely forces a corporation to just cease business, no matter what things they pull or how many people they screw over. The government gives *tax breaks* for corporations to move their labor overseas, this is free trade..how? The government lets corporations publish completely bogus job help-wanted specs that no human could hope to fill-purely as a paperwork compliance scam, so they can import cheaper white collar labor under the HB-x rules. This is free trade-how? Anything that isn't white collar they have for years allowed unlimited massive waves of illegals in to dilute the labor pool and drop down wages-this is "free trade"-how? And corporations can and do act as cartels, and also have the large chunks of cash money *bribes* that they use to pay for legislation. Yes, bribes, no other word for it, bribes. How is joe little guy supposed to come up with 50 grand apiece per representative and senator to "lobby" for this or that law that might make his labor "free trade" more effective and "profitable"? And heavens forbid people want to unionize so they might have an equal footing with management, goes against "free trade" rulezz somehow, you are supposed to "negotiate" against a billion dollar corporation which has an illegal immigrant or a foreign worker at 1/10th the going rate to "negotiate back" against you. Free trade?? It doesn't exist. Scam trade, corrupt plutocracy and high level collaboration to destroy the US middle class worker is the system in place now. They want two classes of humans, worker drones so desparate they will take any job at any wage and have a dismal living situation-then the bosses and owners. That's reality now, that's what the 'free trade" globalists want, not some fantasy "free trade" bullshit where your individual labor is somehow "equal" to the power and influence a billion dollar transnational corporation has.
Want to see the proof? In a very few words, and this is near universal now, about every company out there. You are a "human resource", like the copier or a mop or a ton of coal. That's it, you have lost your personhood, your humanity, you are no longer part of the "person-ell", you are a "resource" and resources are by definition "exploited".
The only "free trade" is the big companies are "free" to trade us around. This is called slavery in the old days, now all they do is tie into a phony credit/money/debtors prisoner-in-place scam, you are "paid" to go into debt forever, you can never pay it off, you have so called personal debt and "national" debt. Try to pay it ALL off, go ahead, try. They will never let you do it. Look at your car, you don't have title, you have certificate of title, the state owns the title. Same with your home unless you are one of the very fortunate and lucky ones to have a land patent. they own the house-that's why they can tax you on it forever. Make you pay rent.
It's modern gussified up slavery, that's all. You are "free" to quit asshole company A to go work for asshole company B, c, D or E. What a good deal! Wait you say, just quit all of them and go move to the woods? Sorry, that is "illegal", you can get arrested if they feel like it for being pennil
Walmart? Your kidding?
Nope.
You may want to google them and use the term unethical when your bored. Walmart is also using imminent domain laws and lobbying to create new super centers. That means Walmart is just taking land away from people.
Simply untrue. Walmart is convincing various local governments to use emminent domain (which I can, at least, spell) to take land, where they can. Walmart does not have the power of emminent domain, not being a government branch.
Mistakes like yours are one of the reasons why Walmart gets away with the crap they do. Their critics sound like idiots.
Also, that's legal, unlike misclassifying employees as salaried exempt.
Also their headquarters was upgraded courtesy of our tax dollars of course costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Disgusting isn't it?
Yes. But legal.
And the worst part is, Walmart has been accused of illegal acts, quite a few times, including in class action lawsuits. Things like locking employees in to the store to force them to work unpaid overtime. But you didn't come up with a single one. Instead, you parrot the same tired, stupid lies that have been helping them get away with it for years.
If you were a Walmart shill trying to make the other side look bad, you couldn't do a better job of it.
Quite a few comments read like that famous story from ea_spouse. It is hard believe that people are willing to put up with 60+ hours working weeks for several months a stretch without any kind of compensation.
I don't mind doing overtime, as long as I am compensated for it. I usually prefer flexitime arrangements where you can save up the overtime hours you've worked and take days off in lieu after the crunch is over.
Uncompensated overtime is work without getting anything back for it. That concept is not new, it used to be called slavery.
Perhaps people working in the US gaming industry would do well organising themselves and setting up a union or two.
I would be amazed if anyone with as much money as Walmart or any bank would ever consider such a blatantly illegal scheme (though many have tried other, more subtle schemes).
I don't think they'd do anything so risky. Read the expemption requirements. They'd have to give them the right to hire and fire other staff.
if all the good guys did turn contractor overnight, and suddenly charge what they were actually worth to the company rather than what was offered when they signed up, but for now, the "market forces" make this unlikely.
...
... which made that market even hotter.
... resulting in TV ad-campaigns from the likes of Monsterboard and an almost overnight increase in the number of job agencies by a factor or 3 or more -
:)
:)))
;)
This is actually what seems to be happening in Holland at the moment, at least for senior software designer/developer positions.
About 3 months ago, all of the sudden most companies decided the worst (of the recession) was over and that they really needed to do those software upgrades/implementations they had been postponing for the last 3 years.
At the same time, the big consultancies started big hiring drives
This cleared up the few available people for permanent positions really fast, at which point both the consultancies and any companies doing implementations started going for contractors since they couldn't find permanent employees.
In short order, both the permanent and the contracting market were red hot.
Meanwhile, the enormous amount of work available meant that just about all small consultancies around here had more work than people to do it with. Since they couldn't find enough senior persons in the permanent market, they had to go for contractors
At this point, the word that the market was good had filtered down to job search web-sites and anybody that tought that they could make a job placement agency
all of them trying to convince people to change jobs.
At this point, employees started waking up and changing jobs
The interesting part is that many, after seeing during the recession exactly how much most companies really care about their employees (as in hearing in the news about downsizings, seeing collegues and friends being downsized and, in some cases, being downsized themselfs) have decided to move from being a permanent to being contractors, especially those with good qualifications (read senior people with good CVs) - after all, if in practice the job security in permanent positions is an illusion (which in Holland, with the current laws, it is), earning as a contractor 3x as much as you make as a permanent is a good alternative way of guaranteeing financial security.
So yeah, at this point people are jumping jobs and, especially the good ones, are becoming contractors.
Did i mention that there's a lack of qualified senior developers around here a.t.m., even contractors? - Its a great time to be a contractor around here
Did i mention contractors mostly have multiple months, 8h/day contracts while being payed by the hour around here? Trust me, when being payed by the hour overwork is really rare
Simply untrue. Walmart is convincing various local governments to use eminent domain (which I can, at least, spell) to take land, where they can. Walmart does not have the power of emminent domain, not being a government branch.
Fixed.
...here's an idea for a flexible regulation:
Nobody in a company may work more hours per week than either the manager to whom they directly-report. Developers wouldn't be permitted to work longer than their manager, their manager couldn't work longer than their director, their director couldn't work longer than their VP, and their VP couldn't work longer than their President/CEO, etc..
That way, how hard the company works depends entirely on how hard the top-level management -- which is already paid hundreds of times more than the lower-level employees (and for skills which are not nearly as rare as they would have us believe, nor for performance that is often in any way competent or worthy of the pay). It would ensure that those who are most highly-paid are also the ones working the longest hours.
It makes sense organizationally too (since virtually-all businesses have a top-down, hierarchical organizational structure -- just like the any socialist government): if there is work to be done, then the people doing the work need to be guided by management (just as if you have a couple threads running in a multithreaded app, you need a thread manager to ensure they play nicely).
I'm sure some of my libertarian fans will mod me down "-1, Commie". But let's face it: the alternative is what? Contract disputes in court? For over 100 years, contract law hasn't the absolutist teeth that libertarians want to have enforced. Would it work if we did? Maybe -- and it's a nice ideal in any case.
But such an ideal is not reality, and as the conservative writer Thomas Sowell likes to say, "reality is not optional."
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Posting from work, so not logging in.
Perhaps contracts should have a 'average weekly schedule' that they have. The contract would state that over the course of XX months the average time per week will be YY. If this exceeds it, then $ZZ/hour is given in additional compensation, for the extra work needed above and beyond the initial projections.
Or something like the above, but with a percentage of the weeks that will exceed the agreed upon hours/week. This way they have to set a maximum they can work their employees before they have to pay them extra, this wouldn't neccessarily help prevent the abuse, but it would make sure that those that are abused get compensated for their time, at roughly their normal rate.
Lets the industry keep the schedules, just have to share the wealth with those they overwork for their profits.
Except that of course the top-level management will exploit that horrendously, as will the levels beneath it as needed. President: *after arriving at 10:00am* "Well... time to start another work day. Well... technically I woke up at around 6:00am, so I'll put that that as my 'start' time. After a 3-hour lunch, I'll head home at about 3:00pm, chill at home for a while, and fall asleep at about 10:00. Wooh! Looks like my workday will be another 16 hours long. Guess I'll go pass that down to the VP." *turnsmidnight on intercom* "Hey bob... I'm pulling a 16-hour day today. You?" VP: "16. Well, put me down for the same. Wanna go for a beer after work?" Pres: "Sure!" .....
Many levels down
Lowly employee: "WTF?!? We've gotta work 15 hours a day for the next week? COME ON!"
Lowly employee's slightly higher supervisor: "Hey, I'm doing the same. Can you image what the crunch higher-ups must be like?"
Oh yeah, this system won't be hideously abused.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
The harder you work, the lesser you get paid.
lucm, indeed.