Slashdot Mirror
What Tech Workers Need To Know About Overtime
onehitwonder writes "The class-action lawsuit that current and former Apple employees have filed against the company raises questions about what kinds of workers are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) — and thus, what kinds of workers are eligible for overtime pay. Some tech workers are covered under it; some are not though perhaps they should be. The lawyer who got IBM workers a $65M settlement from Big Blue for violating labor laws explains why employers often deny tech workers overtime pay and the circumstances under which certain tech workers may or may not be covered under the FLSA. From the article: 'It's not uncommon for employers to err on the side of classifying employees as exempt [from the FLSA], says Sagafi... In fact, the dirty little secret among employers and HR departments is that classifying employees as exempt — even if it means breaking the law — is in their best interest[,] provided... that they don't get caught... "In a sense, they may see it as economically viable for them to skirt the law and wait to see if they get sued because the exposure is not that huge [if they don't get sued]," Sagafi says. "If they can settle [a complaint] for less than 100 percent of what they owe people [for overtime], they've gotten away with a good deal."'"
Some government entities I know have simplified the exempt issue: only managers can be classified as exempt. All non-managers go by the clock. This removes most ambiguities and abuses. General labor law may also want to consider this (except in rare and well-documented circumstances).
Table-ized A.I.
I accepted my first IT Management position about 1.5 years ago. When I took the position I was familiar with the regulations as I had developed payroll software for a big U.S. payroll company for five years. The classification was the first question I brought up to HR. Fortunately, they had classified the employees correctly. However, when I started asking for timesheets, several of them complained.
I'm not a big punch-the-clock guy and have pretty much left it to my employees' discretion as to how they fill out their timesheets. However, I ALWAYS insist that they put in all overtime and account for the not-too-infrequent off-the-clock weekend support calls. It's money they're due, period!
Even if a company "gets away" with not paying overtime they are subject for stiff fines for violating labor law, often greater than the cost of paying the back overtime. It would also be a PR field day for their competitors. I know I would not buy from a company that didn't pay their employees due overtime.
It's simply not worth it...pay your employees!
One could take the libertarian view that says, "if you don't like the work conditions, go elsewhere". Of course, during recessions that's often not a viable choice.
But libertarians tend to be social darwinists in that regard: "let the harsh markets weed out the weak". However, it may lead to the "ugly capitalism" found in 1800's Britain that inspired tons of novels and discourses bashing capitalism.
These issues are still not settled in the US: the progressives and conservatives (semi-libertarians[1]) fight over these views endlessly.
(It's ironic how conservatives tend to reject darwinism in biology, but embrace it in economics and distribution.)
[1] Conservatives tend to be economic libertarians but regulation-oriented when it comes to sex. This is the main thing that distinguishes them from libertarians in my opinion.
Table-ized A.I.
FLSA or not, you get paid what you're worth. If not, then you move on. A strongly competitive market ensures that people will be able to find a new job. As long as they can do that, employers will have to pay an employee what they're worth if they want to keep them.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Usually one of the first questions I bring up upon being accepted for a position involves comp-time/overtime. Then I get it in writing.
They can (and often do) quote policy at length, but you can (and should) negotiate changes more to your liking. But unless the job is an entry-level/helpdesk position, or the market really, really sucks? Never trust an employer to look out for your best interests... that's supposed to be your job, eh?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"Seriously. If I had a job in this crappy market, i'd be kissing some serious feet right now."
You are in hell. I don't know if you realize it or not, but you are a slave with that mentality. You've sold your soul for a little piece of bread.
Now I'm going to use this to take a dig at the free market and capitalism. This is why pure capitalism doesn't work. Companies don't try to "compete", they will lie, cheat, steal and break the law just to make a buck. That's because people will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. Which is of course why communism doesn't work either. Because of people. And the company will keep selling the products because this makes them cheap. And people will keep buying them because they don't care about whoever is getting cheated.
Remember, it's not the company doing this to people, it's just people doing it to people. In the end that's all it is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
the "ugly capitalism" found in 1800's
First of all, what we had in the 1800s was mercantilism, more than capitalism. There was an awful lot of trading in government favors, tariffs, interference with competitors, etc. Secondly, even with those distortions in the market, the industrial revolution is what made our current standard of living possible. There weren't any gangs rounding people up off the farms and forcing them to go work in factories in England or the United States (it was Lenin who came up with that particular crime, and Stalin and Mao scaled it up tremendously.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Crazy shit, I know.
It would only be like that, if the punishment for stealing a car was less than the purchase price of that car.
Well, depending on your local laws and criminal penalties, your connections to the people already working in the car-stealing industry, and your current wealth and income, it may actually be in your best financial interests to start stealing cars until you get caught...
I hear fuel-efficient cars are in pretty high demand (compared to the supply) in some parts of the USA right now, so I think stealing those is a growing "business". Get in now, while it's a new trend!
Or not, if you don't like the idea of being a crook.
Bullshit. We have too damn many hippies trying to pass laws to protect the weak and lazy from themselves. All those laws do is remove Darwinian survival of the fittest from our society which only serves to make all of us weak. If we are to progress as a species and/or civilization, we need fewer laws to protect those who can't be bothered to protect themselves.
In the end, this comes down to responsibility and we need to stop trying to pass the buck to everyone else. The fact that there is a law about over time in situations like this is pure stupidity. I apply for a job that is listed as a salaried position exempt from overtime, guess what? It's a salaried position exempt from over time. There is no reason what-so-ever that any laws should be allowed to override this contract between me and my employer.
Don't like it? Then become your own damned employer.
The kind of shit that needs to be stopped is whiny, bitching, lazy bastards complaining about every little thing they don't like. This is why god (aka, man) invented the firing squad. To rid ourselves of people who think that companies not wanting to pay over time is "EXACTLY the kind of crap that needs to be stopped."
Because I haven't seen anyone here propose a pure capitalism, and you'll find very few people who advocate such. You'll also notice that countries that are capitalism aren't pure capitalism. Capitalism also DOES work because it is the only system I've seen that deals with people, specifically that they are lazy and greedy. While it is not true of all people or in all cases, as a general rule people are lazy and greedy. They'd rather not work, if given the option, and would like to have more stuff. Capitalism plays one off the other, using greed to overcome laziness. Not perfect and doesn't work in a pure state, but it is certainly better than anything else tried.
That only works because most Japanese people won't break the law even if the fines are rather low, because they have principles. If there were more people like your friend parking fines would have to increase.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
This reminds me of the Fight Club when Ed Norton's character is explaining to the woman on the plane that if the total legal liability is less than the cost of recalling all the defective cars, a recall is not issued. There is just no other way to say it... that is some nefarious heinous shit. If laws are really meant to protect and nurture society then this is EXACTLY the kind of crap that needs to be stopped.
No, if that were the case the solution is to make the legal liability for defective products killing someone higher. And in the US, legal liability is higher than almost anyone else. This should make US products safer.
Certainly companies go to greater lengths to avoid being sued for injuring someone in the US than elsewhere. Of course, the price for all this is eventually paid for by the consumer in terms of more expensive stuff.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
See, many people consider the idea of a Darwinist survival of the fittest and civilized society as oxymorons. You should not have to resort to Darwinist solutions to receive the pay agreed upon. Your compensation should not be a competition to see who can screw over who the most.
The idea that laws and contracts should be followed not because you will be penalized for being caught but because they are laws and contracts is significant. I would go so far as to say it defines much of our western society, or at least the ideals our western society strives for at its best.
The $74,880 salary is for 40 hours per week only. If you routinely work more than 40 hours, say 50 hours, then your employer would need to pay you a salary of $93,600 to be safe.
Once your employer fails to pay the correct salary for the calendar year, your classification switches to non-exempt for that entire year.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I really don't get overtime for programmers. Well, perhaps if you need to ship in a few days and aren't quite finished yet, so you work overtime for a few days. That could work.
But constant overtime? It just doesn't work.
If you're building a wall and putting one brick on another, you're probably going to do about twice as much work in twice the time. This does not apply to programming. I've noticed that I have about 4 to 6 hours of programming in me each day. Some days it's more; perhaps up to 10 hours. But most days, it's around 4 to 6 hours.
After I've run out of "programmming" time, I have to stop programming, because if I continue to write code, I'll have to spend time rewriting it the next day. I simply start writing crap code after about 4 to 6 hours of writing code. I can't properly concentrate on writing code anymore, I guess. Once I reach this point, I typically start doing administrativa, replying to mails, answering support calls, writing documentation and such. Or I just go home (happily, I can do that at my current work place; as long as my output is good, I don't need to put in the time).
In my experience, most programmers work the same way. Nobody codes well for 10 hours a day, each day.
This gets us to overtime. If you force people to continue writing code after their natural code writing limit is exhausted, they will write crap. And they will have to refactor that crap. So in effect, forcing programmers to work overtime will slow down your project, because they'll start spending more and more time fixing broken code instead of writing good fresh code.
Article should be titled "What *US* Tech Workers Need to Know About Overtime".
Very few stories on here are US-specific, and they should be labelled as such.
While I agree with you on some matters, I disagree with you on others. Darwinist solutions are time-tested and known to work quite well. But we are destroying our ability to survive by pampering those that lack the skills and motivation. Instead, we should be pushing them harder.
I don't believe in blindly following laws written by people that are not affected by them. I am of the belief that our laws are too complex and as such are becoming more and more meaningless and useless. I should have the right to start a corporation and offer positions with the pay that I want to offer. In an open market like we have here in the US, if the offer I make to potential employees is not satisfactory, they will shun it. I may only be left with the bottom of the barrel and my company will die because of a lack of decent employees. This is not something laws should be governing in a capitalist environment. This is something free enterprise will take care of by itself if the government will merely make sure the market stays competitive.
"If they can settle [a complaint] for less than 100 percent of what they owe people [for overtime], they've gotten away with a good deal." - Sagafi
Even if they settle for 100% of what they owe, they haven't lost.
I'd love a gamble where there's little chance of losing, but even if I did, it'd only mean not gaining or losing anything...
There's only risk if the judgement could be 101% or more. Even then, with minimal risk, it'd have to be pretty high in punative damages to actually stop companies doing it.
Case in point:
There's a brand new PS3, boxed up in an empty shop. If you take it and get caught, they'll take the box off of you and tell you off.
Would you try?
If you don't get caught, there's no punishment.
You should factor that into your calculation:
(Value of car) - (Probability of getting caught) * (penalty converted to monetary value) = Expected net profit (or loss).
It probably won't work for cars, as probability is probably greater than 1/2, and if you count lost wages while being incarcerated (not to mention the cost of being an ex-felon for life), expected net loss would be too great---you might as well buy lottery tickets or go to a casino, at that point.
But, for things as small as parking tickets, this could work as what some people call "reverse lottery". i.e. if you pay less in fines than you would have if you paid parking fees every time, then it's more economically viable to park without permits. Just make sure your probability estimates and other values are reasonable.
Partially, yes. But I'm also partially serious. We're talking about a law that requires companies to pay over time to employees when neither the employee or the company want that.
For instance, I currently work a salaried position in IT which is exempt from over-time. I enjoy the benefits of that position. I can come in a little late. I usually stroll in around 9AM and leave around 5PM. I usually take a 1.5 hour lunch. No one cares because they all see the next day that I also worked from home that evening for about 3 or 4 hours. I enjoy my work enough to work more than 8 hours a day, but in a cubicle farm, I get interrupted so much that I can get more work done at home in the evenings. I participate in an on-call rotation, but even when I'm not on-call, I often times take notice of emergencies and hop online and help out my co-workers with on-call issues. I have no wife or children, am generally anti-social, so I sit at home and work. And I enjoy it.
Enter the law about over time. What happens when these law suits become all the rage and my employer decides that, even though my position doesn't appear to be affected by this law, they make it hourly anyway? Now, I've lost my flex time, have to punch a time card, and must be at work from 8AM to 5PM with a strict 12PM - 1PM lunch. At the very least, I will be unhappy enough that I will no longer work more than 8 hours a day. I will perform worse during the 8 hours that I am there. Sooner than later, I'll probably leave for greener pastures. This is now a negative for both me, my team, and my employer and it's all because someone else somewhere else that has no relationship to me what-so-ever opened his mouth and bitched and complained.
We've got to stop this kind of non-sense. Let me live my life the way I want to live my life for fuck's sake! I'm tired of people bitching about every little thing, going on to spawn new laws that destroy my lifestyle, and then proceeding to bitch about even more shit! We have to stop catering to these people who want life handed to them on a silver platter. It only makes all of us suffer. They need to take initiative to make their lives better through action rather than using a flawed legal system to their advantage. When companies do this, these same bitchers raise holy hell and cry foul. When they do it, it's a self-righteous holy war that is destructive to everyone around them.
This kind of behavior attempts to normalize the work environment for our entire nation. In the end, all this senseless bitching will do is end us all up in a THX 1138 world. That is what a normalized world would look like and whether they know it or not, that's what they're trying to achieve. They decide it's too much work to stand on their own, so they attempt to pull down those who can by constant complaining.
A previous poster had it right. This is people doing this to people, not the companies doing this to people. The companies are just adapting to the crap the people are throwing at them.
Because wage laws were designed for "blue collar" workers almost exclusively. "White collar" jobs were exempt because those were mostly managers and executives who got payed plenty, anyhow, and those jobs didn't translate into hours of labor precisely either.
IT is just what happened to come along and dramatically expanded the pool of non-union, white collar jobs, which didn't fall under most wage laws. Now, companies are accustomed to screwing over their IT staff, and there's a lot of inertia against changing that.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Just because something was made into law in a democracy does not mean that both sides agreed to it. It may just mean that one side out numbered the other and committed tyranny of the majority.
I agree the combination is possible. But the possibility is irrelevant when there is a looming chance of lawsuits.
If this is the case, it's your employer's fault for a total lack of understanding of the issues.
It's not my employer's fault for a lack of understanding. My employer already DOES understand. That's why I am currently in this situation. The lack of understanding is on the side that is pushing this law on my employer and thus on me. Rather than risk further lawsuits, my employer will reduce that risk as much as possible by enforcing uniformity (often misinterpreted as fairness) on all employees. This will mean everyone will get the same hours with the same strictness of policy and lack of flexibility. While this wont happen over night, it will happen a little more every time one of these lawsuits comes to bear until we have no flexibility and everyone across the globe has a uniform job with uniform benefits. Sounds like communism to me.
Why would they need to do that? Connect a modem to the serial port of the hardware and they can dial in to fix the router.
The only things that can't be outsourced (yet) are stuff that needs physical presence. Who knows, maybe your sysadmin might end up being a walking robot remote controlled by a low paid worker in china.....
Seems like somebody forgot to read the FAQ. Not all the articles on slashdot are US centric, but I think that anything that involves the law or politics tends to be very much U.S. centric.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
No, you don't get paid what you are worth. You get paid what you are worth IFF (if and only if) there is free movement of labor whereever there is free trade, and if labor and trade are equally restricted where there isn't free trade.
If, on the other hand, you have free trade without free movement of labor, then...
(1) The products produced by the labor will still be traded, but...
(2) Only certain players [the corporations] will have permission to trade, so...
(3) they will buy the labor, mark up the price, sell, resulting in...
(4) An effective transfer of wealth from laborer to corporation for...
(5) the privilege of being able to trade in the needed product (labor, and its results).
Aside from that, there are also those who say that an increase in power also results in getting more than you're worth, while a decrease in power results in getting less than you're worth. In general then, a laborer would not get what he's worth.
Aside from that, there are always other elements that come into play, so that people don't get what otherwise they'd be worth, but get more or less.
Hopefully, that little reality check here may be helpful in reducing unwarranted growth of toxic pride among those who can least afford it.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I don't care about the stories being US-centric (which is what the FAQ is about), but it would be nice to see US-centric articles marked as such.
The more stories I read like this, the more grateful I am that I don't work in the US. The whole mindset when it comes to employment T&Cs seems like something out the dark ages.
I'ts bad enough that the employers treat staff badly but so many people seem to support that say ing get another job if you don't like it - what if all employers behave badly?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil