Law Firm Fighting For White Collar (IT) Overtime

Maximum Prophet writes "Programmers and System Administrators typically don't get overtime. A law firm based in Nevada is looking to stand up for white-collar workers around the country, trying to reverse decades-old (and incorrect) thinking about what it means to work in an office. 'Computer workers of various stripes, for example, have commonly not been paid for their extra hours ... But under California law, the exemption applies only for workers whose primary function involves "the exercise of discretion and independent judgment." In numerous lawsuits, Thierman and other plaintiffs' attorneys have alleged that legions of systems engineers, help desk staff, and customer service personnel do no such thing. Of programmers, Thierman says, "Yes, they get to pick whatever code they want to write, but they don't tell you what the program does ... All they do is implement someone else's desires.'"

Comments

Re:That will wreck IT...

[Lije Baley]

Not a troll. MOD UP.

Re:Well I do.

[darkmeridian]

Sure, Americans work crazily hard but the United States is the world's strongest economy. Without Americans working so hard to create products for the rest of the world, and thereby making money to spend on the stuff the rest of the world makes, the global economy would be a very different place.

Alright, you can score this as flamebait. But IBM, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Sun, and Google dominate the global IT infrastructure, and they're all American companies staffed with the same insanely hard-working SOBs we're talking about. It's entirely possible that the same results can be had without the long work week, but that's how it's being done in America and no other country with their stronger labor laws has been able to compete on a meaningful basis with these companies. (Antitrust explains Microsoft, but name a non-American company that makes a consumer microprocessor worth a damn.)

And all the financial Wall Street whizzes who occasionally collapse our economy (what? we shouldn't have lent money to bad credit risks?!) make billions for the economy. Our insanely overworked lawyers and bankers revolve around the large "real" companies staffed by the insanely-overworked. Bonuses paid by one bank in New York City totaled $16 billion last year. All that money is spent on the global marketplace and makes the world go around.

You can hate the United States--many of you do--but you can't say no to our products or our money. It's great. We're laughing all the way to the bank.