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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.