Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Ok, I'm a salaried network admin/systems technician. When I applied for my job as a systems tech, I was assured it would be an 8-5 job. Well, about 2 weeks in I am asked to handle a week of after hours calls. This is fine, except my company is in the Medical/PACS industry. If radiologists can't get their images, people could die. Some nights I will get 10+ calls. Do I get comped? No. Do I get anything for this? No. I applied to build servers and be a backup for fielding calls and was assured a certain set of hours. I did my time on helpdesk and would like to think I'd finally graduated past it. I would just like to see some sort of gratuity from the company for me having to literally go 2-3 days without sleep sometimes because of late night calls. Its bad enough when I work from 8 until 10 at night, but then to get calls most of the night after, I think I deserve something.
The problem is that IT are the only workers, non-professionals in the traditional sense, that are singled out as exempt from overtime, whether straight time or time and a half.
State laws, like Californias, are all based off the Federal law.
This exemption was written into the law way back in the 1970'or 80's at the behest of big corporate consulting firms based in NYC. Priot to that, IT folks were paid hourly just like most other office staff.
This is a matter of basic fairness. Why should IT be singled out for different treatment from all other technical trades?
I have been biatching about this for years. Equal treatment under the law is a Constitutional requirement in the US, and just plain ethical everywhere else.
This is also the reason why most IT offices are 40 hour weeks on paper, but 50-60 hour weeks in actuality.
Thank you! Someone who gets it. TANSTAAFL. When the company hires you as salaried, that time you're 'giving' them is factored into the pay. If they had to pay hourly beyond it, you wouldn't get as much in the first place.
The company I work for thinks I put in a lot more overtime than I do because I'm so productive. I do put in -some-, but not nearly as much as they think. The deal works out great for both sides. If this law goes through, I'll get a huge paycut (or fired, and someone else hired) and no overtime as well. I'll just lose money no matter how it goes.
Of course, I'll have more free time... But not a lot more.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Sysadmin type work is NEVER simply a 9-5 type job. Why? Because so much maint has to be done during off hours. That's the way it has always been. If you have an incompetent jerk boss that decides that you need to work 9-5 everyday PLUS do off hours maint with no comp. time or anything, then that's YOUR problem. My "night maint" guys start late the day of maint, get free dinner, and only work a half-day the next day (frequently resulting in a less-than 40 hour week.)
In New York, HR came to IT and requested job descriptions of all the IT employees; which would ultimately decide who was and was not exempt from Overtime due to the Fairpay Act. IT Mgmt complied, and must not have been told the reasons for the request, because after which 85% of IT employees, HR deemed eligible for Overtime. Not only that, we were eligible for retroactive Overtime for time work since Jan. This was in April. I earned Overtime for a full year at Sys Admin hours, all the time knowing this was never going to last. At my next review, Mgmt gave me glowing reviews and "promoted" me. They gave me a new title, which then exempt me from Overtime pay - however my job duties and hours remained the same. My base salary increased by 3%, which is standard at my company. No matter what the law says and how it is written, Mgmt will always find ways around it. But you knew that going in. No one ever went into IT for the long lunches and 35 hour work weeks. Oh, and just to put this in perspective, my brother-in-law served in the US NAVY for 12 years, has held many jobs outside of the military, has multiple degrees in engineering, currently flies passenger jets for an international airline...and he makes less than I do. For what we do, it's not that bad pay.
I'm a medical student who will be graduating soon and entering residency. I hope any progress from this affects us, too - currently the AAMC (which regulates the medical residency programs) limits interns and residents to an 80 hour work week. Yes, these are the people charged with learning to save lives WHILE saving lives. 80 hours per week. Most of us will sign some utterly unfair, incomprehensible, thick as a dictionary employment agreement with our hospital that basically signs our life over to them for the next 3 to 7 years. Choice tidbits of "policy" included in these contracts mention that we may be expected to be on call for anywhere from 18 to 36 hours - on hospital grounds - multiple times per week. The 80 hours limit, while "technically" weekly is only calculated on a monthly basis. Fun times.
It's great that such important people as those who maintain our information technology infrastructure are about to get a financial boost... what about those of us earning $55,000 a year or less with 8 years+ of college and post-graduate education and charged with taking care of you and your family? Everyone envisions doctors as Corvette-driving, boat-owning, million-dollar mansion homestead people. I assure you that in today's marketplace, NOBODY goes into medicine for the money - unless they're making drugs for a big-pharm company or doing boob jobs.
Most companies tell you 40 hrs, but then expect more, and more and more.
I've had a pretty similar experience. When I was interviewing for my last job, one of the company's managers explicitly told me that there would be about two weeks a year of 'crunch time' in which everyone would work longer hours, but otherwise it would be a 40 hour week. They offered me a salary that I considered fair for that amount of overtime, and I took it. Flash forward to actually being on the job and finding out that working a few hours of overtime every Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday was expected, and a full day+ every other Saturday and Sunday was mandatory.
Of course, that being said, I didn't need lawyers to straighten that out for me; I just found a better job ASAP, as did nearly all of the more skilled people who were given a similar bait and switch by that company. Market forces can't fix everything, but in this case it worked out all right. (My exit interview included the same manager, who flat out denied his earlier fradulent claim, although he'd made it to many of us. Weaselly jackass.)
Anyway, the point being, the 'You agreed to the contract!' sentiment I'm seeing in some of the posts on this article is something I can only agree with if overtime was presented accurately during the interviewing process. I've rarely seen a company that does.
Of course you were being taken for a ride, it's the companies job to squeeze as much out their employees as they can for as little as possible.
It's your responsibility to realise that if you signed up for 40hours a week working hours then that's how many hours you should do. If you're not getting paid why on Earth would you work, this has always been a mystery to me.
The best situation is where you can manage your time flexibly, do your 40 hours of work at a time which suits both you and the company best.
I really am amazed that you all don't seem to expect overtime for working more hours, this is madness. I live in the UK and I can tell you I would never ever make a habit of working more hours than I was contracted for without expecting overtime and I think thats a fairly attitude here. If you're working for something then they need to pay you for the work, it's a simple as that. I'm not a charity !
IMHO, in this day in age, there is no such thing anymore as job loyalty (from either party), nor job security. If that is the case, then the two main things that would draw a person to a direct, salaried job are gone. That being the case, you might as well contract.
But that would involve taking responsibility for my own welfare and treating my labor and their money like it's some sort of 'thing' to be 'traded'!
No, I'm afraid a much simpler, 'fairer', and efficient solution is to get some fancy-pants lawyer to sue the crap out of the employer I hate so much and yet am unwilling to leave. In the process, the lawyer will make tons of money, the company will have to cut a few jobs to pay for the legal fees on both sides, but at least I'll get half of what I asked for and they'll get their comeupance!
Seriously though, you point out that 'in this day and age' there is no loyalty on either side. I'd say that's partially a reflection of the unwillingness of workers to ask for (demand?) what they're worth. Labor is a business transaction, you shouldn't hate your business partners or let them treat you 'unfairly'. Get a good idea if what you should be paid, ask for it, and leave if you don't get it.
I read an article a few years ago comparing jobs now as opposed to 20 years prior. It said that fewer employees are asking for raises but theft by employees is way up. It quantified the two and estimated that the employers are probably coming out ahead. People are less willing to play by the rules and just play hard; they have this impression that the only way to get ahead is to bend or break them.
Latewire
I hate to say this (actually no I don't), but when you have a skill that thousands upon thousands of others have ("general IT staff"), as well as anyone who's just "good with computers" you will never make any money.
Also, you aren't really in IT. You are in "plug PC components together"-T. If you want to make money and be shielded from issues in any industry:
1. Be naturally gifted in the area
2. Learn as many general skills in the area you can
3. Learn and be great at at least one high demand skill, that is difficult to learn (yes, being good at programming is difficult to learn; no, setting up simple networks at a 30 person company is not difficult to learn)
4. Continue to learn and develop all skills
Everyone who performs those 4 steps doesn't have to complain about pay, overtime or getting their job outsourced. It's all the rest, who really are just "resources" or "bodies in the workplace" who are going to ruin it for those of us performing the 4 steps above.
Sorry, I think there's a simpler answer to the question, "Why shouldn't people get paid for the hours they work?" It's because the hours you work aren't valuable, it's only the result of that labor that's valuable. We [should] get paid because we're doing something valuable, NOT because we spent a certain amount of time doing it. Historically, time spent has been used as a way to measure value, because it's an easy way to measure the amount of work done. When the work being done is so standardized that there's no way for one person to do more than another in the same amount of time, hours provides a good measurement. However, it has only ever been an approximation.
I'm totally against any govenment intervention in how I get paid because I know that I am more productive than almost anyone I work with. And while my greater productivity doesn't always result in my getting paid as much as I think I should get, the fact that my pay is more based on my getting the work done than on spending a certain amount of time doing means that there is a possible upside, and at least it means I have some flexibility. I can read slashdot during the day, for example, because I know I'll still be able to get my work done.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
Contracting through your own corporation can be easy. I have two organizations that help me with it. A CPA firm obviously, and a PEO. PEO stands for Professional Employment Orgainization. I love my PEO, which is why people don't use them. Imagine that on a t-shirt.
PEO's are a good deal. They take you, your corporation and your contracting money and make you legally into a W2 employee. You pay them a fee per pay cycle to do it. They administrate your health plan (sorry, no volume disounts, at least in my US state), retirement, withholdings, and if you do end up hiring another person later, they make sure you do everything just so, so you stay out of accidental legal trouble.
Furthermore, you get to design your own pay cycle, I have a two week one (not bi-monthly mind you, two weeks). It's nice. You get to set up everything the way you want so it's favorable to you. I just have to tell the payroll guy how much to run every two weeks and the direct deposits happen. There's a little bit of bookkeeping you need to do once a year for the CPA, but that's really tiny.
Between your PEO and your CPA you'll have a couple of meetings up front and then you're good to go.
I'm a little surprised more contractors don't use a PEO now. Maybe because PEO is a horrendous acronym.
Perhaps if you had actually driven a bus for a while, you might not say that. I worked my way through school as a bus drive in Seattle. I loved driving a bus. My quality of life was better driving a bus than working in IT/tech.
I am considering leaving the IT/tech field and moving back to Seattle and getting another bus driving job with Metro.
Again, quality of life.
FYI, the city of Seattle has the highest educated bus driving workforce in the country. Many students work their way through a degree at the UW by driving a bus. When they graduate they often realize that finding work in their field doesn't pay as much as driving a bus. Top scale is $25 or so, and overtime is paid time and a half. Next time you work a 60 hour week, think about the fact that bus drives are getting paid the same if they work that much. With a degree, bus drivers can move into management, which pays more.
And there's that quality of life thing again. If you don't want the overtime, if you want to do something with your free time, like flip houses, you have that choice. (I knew two bus drivers who owned apartment building together.) In IT/tech, you're forced to work 50-60 hour weeks.
I blame my generation (baby boomers) for the expectation of 50-60 hour weeks in IT. Screw that.
Best regards.
"And woe be the guy who isn't back in the office again at 8 AM sharp after working on a project until 1:00 am the day before. I've been threatened with losing pay and even possible termination for just that very thing."
If they fired you, it would probably be the best thing they could do for you. I had a job like that once, and because I dared to leave at 5pm one day for a doctor's appointment, they fired me the next day even though I came in to work at 4:30am. Yes. Twelve and a half hours wasn't enough.
My next job had no overtime, better pay, tuition reimbursement, better health plan, and flex time so I could schedule college classes (I hadn't finished my degree at the time). Seeing how a company could be GOOD, I vowed to myself that I would never work in the bad conditions I came from again. Sure, I've had crunch overtime, and even had to work weird hours for a bit when I was doing a little work for the Mars Rover team, but I've only had one other shitty job since then when a reorganization made me (a Unix software engineer) into an NT sys admin andwebmaster (pronounced "glorified typist"). Even then, I worked damn little overtime (restart, reboot, reinstall wasn't an arduous job).
It helps to be excellent (not merely good) at what you do, though. In the last 17 years, I've only spent about 16 weeks jobless, only 6 of which were without another job lined up at the end of them. Most of that in 2001, which was a lot of us.