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Takin' Care of Business and Working Paid Overtime
theodp writes "About 800 CA-based Siebel employees who held the job title 'software engineer' or 'senior software engineer' stand to pocket $27,000 each from the proceeds of Siebel's $27.5 settlement of an overtime dispute. And while IBM's 32,000 techies won't make out quite as well, they'll still divvy up $65M in OT pay that IBM's shelling out to settle a federal class action suit."
I agree. These stories sound like the movie Office Space. There is no way that I am going to get used like that.
I used to work for a Fortune 100 company and my boss worked a minimum of 90 hours per week. She came in at 5am and left at 7 or 8pm M-F. On Saturdays at least ten hours and a six-hour day on Sunday. When I figured her hourly rate, she was the lowest paid employee in the department.
I don't understand this whole unpaid overtime anyway. If these companies are so bought into capitalism, then they ought to buy more of your labor when they need more.
I always wonder how we've gotten to this point.
Greed and overweening pride. Greed on the part of employers; overweening pride on the part of employees who accept a title instead of what they are due (money).
So many people I know are in this position of being forced to work unpaid overtime and are constantly bitching about it. But I think that a lot of them get off on it because they think that it makes them feel like they have an important job. I actually think that it makes them unimportant--if their time was so valuable, you'd think that they would get paid for it.
Others act like they *have* to because they need their high salary (even though the hourly rate sucks) to afford their lifestyle. Then you look and see that their family of four lives in a five bedroom, 3.5 bath, 5000 square foot house. Often they say that they're "doing it for the kids," as if their kids wouldn't rather actually see their parents once in awhile instead of having stuff.
Ooops! Looks like I went off on a rant. Sorry.