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CA Legislature Torpedoes IT Overtime
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent piece of California legislation is enabling tech firms to avoid paying their workers overtime. Originally designed to deal with bonds for children's hospitals, bill AB10 was completely rewritten to prevent lawsuit damages over overtime nonpayment. "'This is the first time that the Legislature has done a takeaway of the rights of private-sector workers as part of the budget deal,' said Caitlin Vega of the California Labor Federation. 'We just think it is wrong. We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid.'"
you can get paid for overtime?
We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid
Not only that, but as this legislation allowed massive abuse of employee's time, the state will suffer as skilled workers start looking elsewhere for employment.
No thanks, I much prefer individual bargaining than collective bargaining. I'm making more money and working at a vastly cooler company than ANY unionized employee could possibly be.
Comment of the year
Actually, I see a lot more democrats than libertarians. Also, IT has a shortage of good workers and high barriers for new employees, so if every worker left a company that refused to pay overtime, then the company would fail almost overnight. Any substantial company I've worked for has a code base that takes months to learn well enough to be truly effective at your job, and if you can't get bugfixes out faster than that, then you're screwed. For other companies, if they can't get new products out they're screwed. The free market cuts both ways, it's just that people get so caught up in the fact that the company is big that they fail to realize they have the company by its balls.
I work 9 to 5. I work HARD 9 to 5, but at 5 I log out and go home. If you want me to spend extra time at work then we need to do some negotiation for a new contract and you're going to be giving me more money.
I am not going to give up time with my family so some middle manager can get some slaps on his back for bringing in the project on a date he never should have agreed to in the first place. What ever happened to accountability? oh right.... they get $700bn bail outs.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
You don't even need an industry wide union. If EA's employees all walked out while they were being abused and picketed their offices, then there's no way they'd be able to find enough programmers to cross the picket line. If your company doesn't treat you well, go elsewhere. If there's nowhere else to go, start your own company and steal all the best programmers who are being treated like crap. With such a disparity between programmer skills and knowledge of the code base, the programming department has a lot of power.
You basically answered your own question. Those who excel (or at least believe they do) have no incentive to give up their freedom and opportunities for advancement to protect those who don't perform as well.
Who modded you "insightful", someone else who didn't even read the summary?
You think it's OK to work someone for free? You actually believe that if I work for you and you don't pay me I shouldn't be able to sue you?
No wonder the economy is headed down the toilet; it's people like you who run things who are running them into the ground.
Free Martian Whores!
It is not laziness to want to eat dinner with one's family. Nor is it laziness to want to spend the weekend caring for them.
It is ridiculous to think that the company owns so much of your life that work should take the highest priority in one's life.
When I used to be a nurse (not many years ago), I built up six weeks worth of unpaid overtime, or 'time in lieu' as they called it, during a period of low staffing.
I was supposed to be either paid it or given an equal amount of time off, but what actually happened was they said it was too much, wiped it out and gave me a long weekend off. They hadn't seemed to mind the potential cost whilst working me half to death and taking advantage of the legal requirement to not leave patients without care to force me to work 20 hour shifts.
I left shortly after and gave up nursing, just one of many people leaving in droves due to this sort of thing and other pay related nonsense in the UK.
Now I'm a programmer If any employer tries that crap on me again I'd quit and go elsewhere.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I've worked some unpaid overtime in my life, but the amount is miniscule in comparison to the amount of time I've spent during normal working hours surfing the web, reading usenet, emailing my buddies, checking sports scores, ordering stuff from amazon, everything the internet allows. Easily two to three hours a day on an ongoing basis.
I just can't get mad about a couple hours of evening work or blowing a sunday afternoon in the office once a month when I'm just going to read slashdot while waiting for a batch job to finish.
If you think IT is bad, try biomedical sciences, medicine, and science academia.
The concept of overtime does not exist for >90% of the workers in these fields. It's not uncommon to ASSUME that a 12-hour day is normal, at 6 days per week.
And yes, I am including students... because if your training extends into your 30s, you're an employee.
Oh, and by the way, ask your nearest ER resident (or even a junior attending) when was the last time they had a 40-hour week. Most of the time, the answer will be "high school".
It is GOVERNMENT that is preventing suit for collection of overtime, not the market-place.
I think the uppercase word should be suit, not government. Government is not preventing you from negotiating for overtime pay with your employer. Free market is still operating. What they are preventing is a lawsuits on a premise which is absurd to start with, i.e. that you can get a job with an employer that doesn't pay overtime, work overtime while knowing that you won't get paid for it, then sue the employer. A real libertarian would say if overtime pay is what you're after, a) don't take that job, or b) don't work overtime, of c) if the employer insist you work overtime anyway, find another job
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"Unions in this country have long outlived their usefulness." While the model doesn't necessarily apply here, this country needs strong unions now more than ever. I used to work in a factory that voted down an attempt to unionize while I was there (in 1996) The factory workers started at $10/hr, health insurance was free and we got paid double time when we worked Sundays or and paid holiday (So holiday pay + 2X hourly pay). I checked in with a friend who is still there, employee's pay $200/mo for insurance, they still start at $10/hr and they no longer get paid double time. Its no longer possible for a skilled factory worker to live a middle class lifestyle....and yet your average CEO makes an insane amount of money. And the answer can't be "Go to College" because someone will always have to do the menial jobs and they should be able to earn a livable wage working those jobs
of my fellow workers here on the farm collective lean monarchist theocrat, while my former unit in military intelligence leaned green anarchist. but hey, that could just be me
anecdotes, shmanecdotes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd have modded you "funny" for that one, myself.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
"the tracking of hours generally is anathema to the creative and free thinking computer professional employees,"
Indeed. As is the tracking of inventory.
I'm getting my overtime pay one way or another.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Yes. The "free market" does cut both ways; however, both sides are rarely equally sharp.
For instance for a worker to leave his or her job that worker would have to take a loss in income. With rising debt and unemployment currently seen in this nation it is unlikely that many could afford to leave their companies. Also such high barriers to entry still largely apply to employees leaving one company and moving to another. It will still take months to learn a new code base.
Companies don't have families, they don't need to eat, sleep or breath and they can't be sent to jail. Also they don't have balls.
Wait, did you just advocate REMOVING Right To Work laws? Are you insane? Should we just go back to a guild system where if you want to learn a trade, everyone already working the trade can decide you're not allowed to? Wasn't that awesome?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Both are quite OK with entitlement. The difference is that republicans don't like it when someone else is receiving it.
A friend of mine worked a high tech job that required lots of flying to other cities and living out of a hotel room. He would spend weeks away from home, fly home for a weekend on occasion, then fly out again. One day he realized he was missing his little girl growing up and he was becoming a stranger to his family. After completing a particularly grueling job that took several months, he chose to take two weeks off and spend it with his wife and daughter. His boss thought otherwise because they had already booked him for another job. He flat out refused to go to it. They fired him. He took them to the labor board. They lost big time. My friend had documented every minute he had spent waiting in airports and in the air. Under California law those were paid times (at least they used to be). As he had never been paid for the travel time, they not only had to pay him, they had to pay a penalty to him. He's now much happier with a local job. He gets to have dinner with his family and sleep in his own bed. The pay is only slightly lower and he is much happier (and so is his family).
So what is your time worth to you? If you are willing to work unpaid overtime, then you put a very low value on your life. I flat out refuse to work unpaid overtime on a regular basis. Yes, I've occasionally put in a couple of extra hours, but this is the exception, not the rule. Typically, if an emergency requires me to work late, I'll leave early the next day (or come in late). If a project consistently requires overtime, management has not done their job. Either they didn't assign enough people to the project, or they set too short of a deadline. Improper planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on mine. One or two days of crunch time isn't a problem. Shit happens. But weeks or months of it is not acceptable and your project is NOT going to be on time because my life is worth far more. You say you'll fire me if I don't work unpaid overtime? Not a problem. Go ahead and fire me. We'll talk further in a hearing.
I should repeat this. Emergencies happen and require extra time. Failure to set a reasonable deadline (or changing the requirements at the last minute) is NOT an emergency. Also, if I'm expected to carry a pager and be on call, my salary better reflect that requirement. I don't get up at 3am to fix your server for free. At one job, they decided to stop authorizing overtime pay, so I changed nagios to never send out alerts outside of work hours. Five nines of uptime aren't free. In this case, management didn't have a problem with it. The systems did not need to be up 24/7. Oddly enough, an ecommerce job, where 24/7 uptime was essential, was least willing to make the investment to keep things running (thus one of the reasons I no longer work for them).
-- Will program for bandwidth
DUDE: Why was your boy Paulson *on his knees*, fucking literally, in Nanci Pellosi's office begging her to support the handout? You live in a dreamworld.
In fact, let's have a heart to heart. Seriously. I need to know. Are you just a republican fanboi or do you really have Republican values and have just been duped by the crooks in office?
Note where the capitals are--lowercase is for the posers known as the "republican party", capitals is for real Republicans like Senator Ron Paul. If you don't know what Republican means, look up "Republicanism" in wikipedia and memorize the first few sentences. The "republican party" these days are not, by and large, real Republicans.
If you are a real Republican, you would literally get sick to your stomach when a President who calls himself a "republican" asks for $700B to hand out to banks. SICK TO YOUR STOMACH. I have news for you and for every one else who has been duped: These are not Republicans.
They call themselves "republicans", but they aren't "Republicans". They do not follow the Rule of Law as evidenced by illegal wire tapping. They do not care for liberty, as illustrated by the Patriot Act. And they do not care for democracy or else they would put proposals like a $700B bailout to a popular vote. And they also do not believe in personal responsibility or the free market as evidenced by the proposal to bail out irresponsible banks.
Now, you will probably say something silly like "democrats are guilty of stuff like that too." And I will say, yes, but it doesn't matter because I'm not talking about democrats here, so don't try to change the topic. I'm not calling myself a democrat, so don't think I'm apologizing for them. I'm calling myself a Republican with a capital "R".
You probably have some naive notions, like "Rule of Law" means lots of cops with tazers. That is not "Rule of Law". That is fascism. Get this stuff straight.
You probably think that "Rule of Law" means more laws, like laws against smoking pot or having gay sex. Again, wrong. "Rule of Law" applies to the operations of the rulers. "Rule of Law" means that the rulers are ruled by law. It means that the no man is above the law. (Make sure you go study that wikipeda article before you argue that point.) "Rule of Law" does not mean that the subjects must be ruled by cops and draconian laws.
You are probably asking now, "how about the subjects? How about the people? What's going to keep them doing what I think is right?" Well, assuming your idea of "right" makes any sense whatsoever, in our Republic, which is also a federation of states, the idea is that most criminal law should be deferred to the states themselves. The exceptions would be laws against actions that adversely and DIRECTLY affect the operations of the Federal Government. (Some washed-up sixties flower child smoking a joint at a Jethro Tull concert does not constitute DIRECTLY affecting the operations Federal Government.) So, can a person have gay without getting arrested? Well, in the ideal "Republic" of states, this question is left to the states, NOT to the Federal Government. That's why they call it a "Federal Government", because of the concept of deferring most law to the states.
But is this *really* how true Republicans think? Surely they want federal agents breathing down every pot smoker's slimy back, don't they? NO THEY DON'T. I refer you to a concept called New Federalism, which was a reaction to the New Deal and was spearheaded by one of my favorite presidents, Richard Nixon. (I'm fucking serious about Richard Nixon, so unless you are prepared to read up on his history as president and his ideals, don't even think about questioning my sincerity here.) He was the closest thing we've had to a Republican in office in the last 50 years. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Now I ask you, since I recognize your name and the mindless "conservative" tone of yo
Just callin' it like I see it.