Slashdot Mirror
US Senator Proposes Bill To Eliminate Overtime For IT Workers
New submitter Talisman writes "Kay Hagan (D) from North Carolina has introduced a bill to the Senate that would eliminate overtime pay for IT workers."
The bill is targeted at salaried IT employees and those whose hourly rate is $27.63 or more. It seems comprehensive in its description of what types of IT work qualify — everything from analysis and consulting to design and development to training and testing. The bill even uses "work related to computers" as one of the guidelines.
And if this idjit is still there, I know I am voting THEM out. What a maroon.
How does this make sense for govn't.. isn't this a Private sector issue?
to be kidding me. Let's see if we can get a vote up to lower THEIR pay.
Hurray, no more working late!
Wait.. they still expect people to work without being compensated for their late hours?
Did EA send out lobbyists again with briefcases full of money?
Well it should be obvous who supports the middle class here! If you want a good job vote this man OUT!
Already living this. Welcome to the Sweat Shop Of The 21st Century!
YES! Please shoot yourselves in the foot Stupid "Deamon-Crap" politicians! See how far you get on your campains with no tech support or information assurance!
This would effectively make unions the only options for such workers.
Fucking scam artists.
IT work already has a terrible education:pay ratio and the pay is nothing special in relative terms, that's a strange sector to target...could it have something to do with outsourcing?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That means I get to go home at six, right?
8 hours work for 8 hours pay.
Don't work for free, people. After all, you're just an employee to them, not a BFF.
I recently saw a guy who had worked at my current place of work get given the shove after nearly 20 years. Escorted him out of the building and everything. He sat in the pub blubbing like a baby and asking how they could be so cruel after everything he'd given them.
I've vowed never to work a minute past what I'm contracted to do, and if I have to I simply come in late the next day.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
... and their site is down. If only they had some IT guys who could do overtime to bring it back up...
Prk
The move is not as nefarious as your headline suggests. This bill is to fix a problem... if you pick up your smartphone and reply to an IT question after business hours, did you work overtime? Of course not. Definitions of being "on call" and responding to server hiccups, etc, should be between you and your employer and not part of some collective bargaining union crap that labels your email reply as "overtime".
They will walk all over you as they please now.
Steal your rights, steal your democracy. Treat you as a slave.
They will trash your protests and spray you down.
Here comes the global fascist state.
... if it got rid of congressional pay and prevented IT workers from having to work more than 40 hours.
Time to offend someone
$27.63 seems oddly specific
But with the amount of overtime pay in the IT community someone will pretty soon realize that unless people actually sometime work overtime to fix problems it won't be long before people start cutting up old tires to make body armour.
- "There is nothing quite like an ineffective solution to an nonexistant problem"
That's like a fantasy for most of us.
I work for the government, and I can tell you that when someone wants some weekend work done we're there. If its after hours and you're overseas and need help at 1AM when its like 3PM some place else, we're there. Now I understand leeching the government, but when so many of us are contractors I can't really say the actual WORKER sees that much of the cash. We don't. I'm not sure of all the reasons this is, but it is the truth nonetheless. If you would just hire people, say "You know, here's a 401K we're too broke to do pensions anymore" and move on we'd be better off. Maybe its more complex than this, I'm sure it is, but right now - this is absurd. Worst part is I'm a Democrat, and wincing at this.
I've read the bill's text but I haven't ascertained any rationale for it. Clearly they think there is some cost savings to be realized, but where? All that will really happen is the skilled workers will get salaries/wages to offset the loss of overtime, leaving the less skilled and fresh grads with the less desirable pay/positions. The net result is less people will want to get into IT due to this new barrier to entry.
...to the ranks of the salaried and professional employees where overtime pay is negotiable at a disadvantage, and often missing.
News flash: Not all IT workers are either salaried or have an hourly rate of $27.63 or more. Living in the US midwest and in the current job market, I make less than that, and so do a lot of other people in IT. So the title is misleading due to myopia.
And when I was on salary, I didn't expect to be paid overtime, because I understood what "salary" meant: $X per year, divided into 26 pay periods.
Overtime pay? In a tech job? Overtime there is much, overtime pay - not so much. For most IT workers this wouldn't change things.
From TFA:
[People meeting these criteria] shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1)
No mention of overtime pay in there. Looks more like a clarification of contractor vs employee classification for tax purposes (meaning more tax liability for employers if more people are to "be considered an employee") if I read that right. IANAL
...this is still surprising to see this coming from someone with a D after their name. This is not because they are fundamentally more decent, but their usual constituency doesn't really seem to buy the "blame the middle class" argument, at least not as much. This seems like a really, really dumb idea, if for no other reason than the political fallout it will create.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
If you work in IT, before or after this bill, you are a sucker. Plain and simple.
And a (D) has proposed this? She's trying to get attention. This will NEVER pass.
Aren't most IT workers exempt anyway? (Not that I think they necessarily should be, but still.)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This is already the case in our company; salaried employees are marked as "Exempt"... which means, exempt from getting paid overtime. How is this a government legislative issue??
The bill is short so below is the full text from thomas.loc.gov. For a congressional bill it is surprisingly readable.
To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to modify provisions relating to the exemption for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, or other similarly skilled workers.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Computer Professionals Update Act' or the `CPU Act'.
SEC. 2. AMENDMENT TO THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938.
Section 13(a)(17) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 213(a)(17)) is amended to read as follows:
`(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
`(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
`(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
`(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
`(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).'.
Time to offend someone
Note that that the headline says the bill would eliminate Overtime, whereas the summary says Overtime Pay. I'm all for eliminating forced overtime, but overtime should be paid. Otherwise, you'll lose the good IT staff, and that can decrease the productivity of the whole organization. Isn't having 5 employees accomplishing 10% more work within a 40 hour week worth paying an IT technician for an extra 3 hours of work?
I am going to take a page out of the great depression. the Kellogg cereal company during the great depression lowered the max hours one of their workers could work from 40 to 30 or so. while the people who were working at first did not like the lowering of their income they did like the effects it had on the city around the plant. kellogg to fill the gap hired more workers who in turn only worked the shorter amount of time, but it helped prop up the rest of the city. costs of food and the like there went down and even though the average income went down the people there including the people who had their hours cut ended up liking it. especially the increased time with their family. if they eliminate overtime and the position had scheduled overtime before they should then fill the gap by hiring someone else.
Like NO pay at all over 40 hours? Or no work and no pay? Or just no time-and-a-half? I make well over that amount as a contractor and no firm has ever paid 150% per hour after 40 (which is fine by me) but is this some kind of salary cap or does it just legalize what Ive already known to be mostly true - too expensive for 150%??? 10 sites and no specifics
Since I'm not from the U.S. I might have misunderstood something here, but does the U.S. senate really have the authority to change in employment contracts for the worse?
Where I live, the government can enforce things like minimum wages, but if my contract includes overtime pay, then the only way it can disappear is if my employer and I renegotiate the contract.
Any kind of over time here is illegal. And if you have to do it the employer has to pay 150% for regular work days and 200% for weekends and national holidays.
So, you guest it, not much overtime happening here.
15 years in IT and I do not recall one job that paid overtime.
His theory of capitalism was, in a nutshell, that an employer's goal was to increase profit by increasing the amount they could make their workers work without paying them anything extra. Which is, of course, exactly what is being codified in this law.
Consider some widget that cost $300 to make $250 in materials and $50 for 1 worker to work 6 hours on it. But our capitalist wants to make more money, so he makes his worker work 12 hours instead of 6 (which the worker accepts, because being unemployed is so much worse), so now he has $600 worth of widgets, which are now $500 in materials, $50 in labor, and $50 in profit.
Regardless of what you think about communism, Marx's theories of capitalism need to be taken seriously, because the guy was predicting, in the 1870's, a lot of the economic behavior we see today.
I am officially gone from
so if its some brand we have dealings with, we can avoid the whores ( i apologize from all sex sector workers) like the plague in our dealings.
Read radical news here
Wait, some of y'all been getting overtime pay?
I'VE BEEN ROBBED!
Anything is possible given time and money.
I hate how Congress thinks it can legislate anything it wants, and whatever it can't legislate in can hold a "hearing" on and then impose some ridiculous punishment. Interstate commerce. It's not meant to be a gateway for doing whatever the hell you want, it's supposed to be highly restrictive and limiting.
Such an oddly specific number, why not round it up to $30?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
There are hourly IT folks making more than $27.63/hr? I thought IT was predominantly salary/exempt because of this very issue...?
How is this different than the plight of software engineers, hardware engineers, or designers that work outside of the IT industry? How is it different than the legions of R&D folks that are listed as exempt employees?
I'm not saying it should happen. Far from it. But the real battle is that technical professions all over have been moved to exempt status and their employees continue to be forced to work exceedingly long days for 8 hours of pay. It's not the IT guidelines that need reform, it's the ones for all technical professions.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00029617&type=I
I don't see any obvious IT related industry donors from the past that might be influencing her (who knows about now). She is on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee so thats probably where it came from. Strange.
It mostly goes province-by-province, but in my province (Alberta), IT technically does not qualify for overtime pay.
However, the reality is quite different. Our job market never really suffered the ill-affects of the recession, so things have remained pretty red-hot here. Unemployment is at 5.4%, and factoring in systematic unemployment, it's practically nill - help wanted signs everywhere. Employers would never actually get away with this here. If you pulled that crap on someone, they would simply leave, and make a bit more elsewhere. The job market here is incredibly competitive (given a labor shortage), you'd have no problems getting a job elsewhere.
While a company might not actually pay overtime, they'll still acknowledge it and let you take time off in lieu. I don't technically make overtime pay, but any time I spend over and above the normal 40 hrs/wk, I can take off elsewhere.
3 of the 4 sponsors of the bill are republican. go figure.
Read radical news here
What kinds of companies do Kay Hagan and the other sponsors invest in? I know there are supposed to be laws preventing congress members from knowing the composition of their portfolios, but I don't know enough about it to understand why those laws don't seem to have any effect.
How bout they stop worrying about our overtime pay, and start considering getting the career politicians out on the street.
I'm not sure how if this law applies in the event of a labor strike. But is this partially a response to the Verizon strike, where many employees who worked in their various NOCs were given massive overtime to compensate for the striking workers in the North East. I worked in the Cary, NC building, but I had just left the company before the strike occurred, so I don't know the specifics of how everyone got compensated for the overtime.
Senator Kay Hagan
http://twitter.com/#!/senatorhagan
http://hagan.senate.gov/
521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-6342
Fax: 202-228-2563
According to govtrack.us, the bill is currently being examined by the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/committee.xpd?id=SSHR11), so it may be worth your while to write to each of the 13 Senators on that committee. What they "decide" affects all of us, not only those whose states they represent.
Great news! Another victory for the 1 percent!
CURRENT LAW:
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.
NEW BILL:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
‘(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
‘(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
‘(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
‘(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).’.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
As you can see, the hourly rate and the type of worker involved has not changed at all. It appears that they're merely clarifying the definition of a computer services professional.
Personally (and I know this is going to earn me a few "troll" points from our faithful moderators), I am against mandating things like time-and-a-half and double-time pay. Although it sounds like a good deal for hourly workers, in fact it probably discourages employers from paying people more. They'll just get a part timer to come in and do the extra work, or offshore it, or some such.
I'm in IT and when I'm hourly, I love to work 50-60 hours a week. I don't give a damn about all these overtime rules; I just want to make more money. But since around 2001, companies have been much more reluctant to let people bill more than 40 hours a week unless the top management grants special permission to get some project done or some such.
Frankly I wish the government would just stay out of these matters and let the free market decide what's a fair wage, what's fair hours, etc., but maybe I'm naive :)
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Unless you actually hold a stake in the company (meaning you are part owner), then your boss holds absolutely no loyalty to you. You are merely a cog in the machine, replaceable for a predetermined cost. In that case, there is no logical reason to be loyal from your end -- what are you going to get out of it? A big fat letdown, that's what.
It all comes down to what I like to call the "3 P's of climbing the corporate ladder": Perception, Perception, and Perception. The days when loyalty, hard work, and dedication made a successful career are long gone. Today it's all about social skills. ALL about social skills. If you want to advance your career, start spending more time building your "persona" and less time doing actual work, because that "persona" is what will actually make you successful, not your accomplishments.
After first being acquainted with this amendment, I went to look at what currently is law... and, quite frankly, as an IT person, I ~already~ appear to be covered by the previous broader/more vague definition already in the code. Can someone analyze how impactful the difference in language ACTUALLY is?
Dell, Google, etc have just moved to North Carolina...so much for not being evil. Thanks Mikey and Larry, throw us under the bus some more.
Seriously, next time its 5:00 and 'the website is down'... I'll just go home.
When I took my position, I accepted a much lower number than what's quoted, and I'm salary. I'm actually surprised there is even a need for this bill - pretty much every full-time IT person I know is salary, and there isn't any hope of overtime pay.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I'm an English professor. For what it's worth, I'll offer a comparison. (Mostly for people who were as ignorant as I was before entering the job market.) Doing the math, I see that the $27/hr is about $4320/month gross, without overtime. That's just over what I make as a professor with five years experience (I have a high salary for my field). After taxes, retirement, and health insurance, the take-home for that amount of pay is going to be right at $3,000 a month. It's not enough to keep my family out of the red some months, since there are four of us, and my wife can't get a job with her IT degree (from a major research school!). So this is not exactly a bill that would be soaking the rich. It's hitting middle-income earners. Next point of comparison: in my field, there's no such thing as overtime for a salaried person. I never knew such a thing existed. If it did, most academics would be on a gravy train, as it's easy to hit 50-60 hours a week during the academic year, with summer workloads dropping back down to 30-40 (if you're doing your research, which you'd better if you want tenure or promotion). I thought the whole point of salary was locking you into one amount of pay so that the employer could work you as hard as they want without paying more. (I guess I'm still ignorant.)
before everyone has a heart attack, compare the current text to the newly worded text.
old bill text:
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and
who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.
new bill text:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).’.
Gotta keep us tech workers affordable...
No joke. Just do a search on "IRS section 1706". For the impatient: http://tinyurl.com/yb4rh4l
IT workers propose bill requiring citizen referendum on any congressional pay raises
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I learned a while back that make my job something I can enjoy no matter what my employers demand of me. If I work more than 40 hours then I'm happy to do it because I like doing it. I work to give myself fulfillment. My pay is a separate discussion altogether and a contractual agreement between me and my employer that the work I like to do is worth so much to them. Honestly, I'd probably do a lot of what I do for free on my own time. So......be happy!
This is all much ado about nothing. There are no real changes to current law here - the computer professional exemption has been a part of the FLSA for years at least - probably decades. See the Department of Labor fact sheet - http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm The proposed amendment has 2 purposes. 1) It provides a more detailed definition of computer professional. 2) It cleans up the weekly salary requirement by linking it to the standard salary requirements, instead of existing seperately. The hourly number is the same in both versions. So there's essentially nothing new here. This is a cleanup/clarification of existing law, with almost nonexistant changes.
They want to change it to this:
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Unfortunately, we already have that law in Oregon.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Kay Hagan, what a stupid, useless cunt.
I'm not saying I support this, but in order to understand this proposal you have to understand what an exempt employee is in US (and state) law. (IANAL: this is my rough-and-ready understanding of the system). There are two categories of employee, exempt and nonexempt, and different labor rules apply to each, about things like overtime, unionization, and benefits. There are several tests for whether a given job is exempt or non-exempt, including salary and job description. In general, people with managerial or administrative responsibilities are exempt, whereas those who work hourly and do not supervise others are nonexempt. But it's incredibly complicated (see, e.g., this page). So many IT workers were in a grey area, and this bill proposes to put those above the salary cutoff on the exempt side of the line. It does not mean singling out IT workers for some uniquely debased, exploited status, but rather putting them in the category of professionals/administrators/managers (which confers both downsides and potential benefits). You can agree or disagree with the move, but you need to appreciate how it fits into the context of American labor law.
.sig withheld by request
Yeah, good luck to them getting anyone one to work on Senator's computers ever again. Email, internet, and computers frequently have problems. Nobody has to crash them... we just don't have to fix them once they do. A day without IT can be a real bitch, just like some Senators.
"Ah, gee, Senator. My shift ended at 5pm and I don't do overtime. Call back tomorrow between 8 and 5pm."
I8-D
When I worked in the US, between graduating (1995) until 2001, we were already "exempt", in other words exempt from getting overtime payments. It's one of the reasons I left the US, the crappy work/life balance and the expectation that working unpaid overtime was the norm for software developers (I've since heard my old workplace now effectively requires - not during crunch times, but the actual norm - something like 50 hour weeks while only paying for 40. During crunch times of course they demand far more).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You better not pout, and I'm telling you why. Hackers are coming to town! Any bets on how long before this Senator has her shorts exhibited in public? I hope she doesn't have any incriminating or embarrassing data on her computers or phone...
I thought labor law was a state-by-state issue. TYhe connection between labor & production to Interstate Commerce is tenuous in the extreme.
As for paid vs indirectly compensated overtime, for me the issue is easy: if the work is time-based (work this shift) OT should be paid for all salary levels. if the work is task-based (finish this project) it might not be.
Unpaid OT implies unpunished undertime! If you cannot take an afternoon off, you really should not be working unpaid OT. If you are, you are taking a cut in pay and rewarding bad behaviour (mgmt pushing).
This is the kind of un-mowed lawn one gets when business becomes a part of the government. All the benefits, and none of the accountability. Businesses are run by people, businesses are not people. I'd like to see BP arraigned for the murder of the 11 workers that died when it said, "do it, we're in charge here." Murdering 11 people in the U.S. is considered a Serial Killer scenario.
simply regulated the work environment to where the employers are practically given reason to make an unbearable situation, next roll in the unions to protect the abused workers, mandatory union contributions feed back to DNC coffers (my friend pays over 1k a year in dues I think)
So win win for them
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's more of a clarification, not a drastic change. For example, the $27.63 is already in current law! Things like "similarly skilled worker" are just spelled out with more examples.
Current law (as of Jan. 7, 2011), from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000213----000-.html
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and
who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.
That really isn't very different from the Proposed bill, from story:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).
No an american, so I am confused.
I thought the Republican doctrine was less government interference and all about letting the free market do things.
What is the party position for interfering in the labour market in this way? On what grounds is this within party policy?
Maybe their family members get a free ride to college. Or a 6figure consulting gig to do nothing. Or promises for compensation after they are out of office and no one is looking?
How can we possibly hope to keep them honest? If we dont trust them, then why did we elect them?
look at
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17a_overview.pdf
it already has exemption computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing
So all this does is expand job categories/duties that can be exempt.
It's safely invested in Greek, Italian and Spanish government bonds. They went with a conservative approach to investing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
quit and be your own boss or become an independent farmer or an independent trader....
I'm not from the IT industry so I may be a little misguided, but aren't a lot of jobs going offshore mainly because it's more expensive to maintain a team here? The government mandating this is a totally separate debate, but by doing so, might local salaries be more in line with what companies want to pay therefore bringing jobs back home?
The Internet engineer must have banged his wife while he was installing Internet at their house!
Read the full text of the Fair Labor Act if you want to get a sense of just how deep down the rabbit hole government regulations go. I'm sure we all rest easy at night knowing that people making sugar beet molasses do not get overtime pay.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I was an IT whore (pimped out all over town) back in the early 90's; we referred to $27.63 as the "poverty rate" for IT consulting jobs. Below $27.63, you got overtime, above it you got straight time.
That bill is already law, at least in my country. It is called the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution. Congress can't raise its own pay; it can raise only the next Congress's pay. If you disagree with a pay raise, plead the 27th and vote against the incumbent.
The most important reason to require overtime is to force companies to hire more people instead of making employees work longer hours.
Some say that you can negotiate and gvt should stay out. Ask yourself this - if you were required to work 8.5 hours or loose job/promotion what would you do? How about 9.5 hours? 10 hours? 12 hours? Overtime keeps employers in check. Boggles my mind why lower paid IT workers are not required to be compensated x1.5 for overtime?
Pity most other countries in the world START at 25 payed days off. That is 5 weeks incase your over worked mind can no longer do math.
Most amazing myth I ever heard about the US is that of the "working poor". People who have a regular job or even two AND still can't keep themselves fed and housed. I am mean, how silly do you think we dutch people are? It is like plate sized hamburgers. Nice photoshop, no way that is real, no human beings could possible eat so much and no dressing up an elephant and putting it on a moped does not fool me.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If outsourced labor can provide essentially the same productivity for a far lower cost, then what does that say about the value American labor provides? This is Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound": the jobs aren't go exactly where he thought it would, but that's a minor detail. The principles of his prediction were dead-on.
The numbers are simple: you can get basically the same quality and quantity of product (be that code, widgets, or most other things) from foreign labor, all for considerably less cost. This is why businesses outsource, and it's tough to even blame them: like anyone engaging in trade, even consumers, they're merely looking to get the best value for the money they spend. If you want to end outsourcing, then one way or another you have to change the numbers: lower foreign productivity, raise foreign costs, raise American productivity, or lower American costs.
Lowering foreign productivity would work if it were possible, but it depends entirely on factors over which no entity in the US has any real control, making any attempts to do so meaningless. So this is out.
Raising American productivity is slightly more practical, in that the factors involved are of the sort that the US actually has control over. The problem is that it takes sweeping cultural changes to do this, and that requires new generations. We don't have time for that; we need something that applies here and now. So this, too, is out.
That leaves cost-based approaches: either lower American costs or raise foreign costs. Raising foreign costs basically amounts to the imposition of import duties: tax the wazoo out of foreign imports (including code written for hire) until outsourcing costs more than hiring from within the US. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but no side of the aisle actually wants to do it right now, especially not with the countries that would most need to be targeted, because those countries have us over a barrel debt-wise.
That leaves only one option: lower the cost of American labor. As an IT worker myself, I'm no more a fan of this than anyone else on this site, but it is by far the most, if not the only, realistic solution.
I work IT in education. The general attitude at the institutions I've worked for has been that if you end up putting in extra time for some reason you can make it up by pulling half days or leaving early without taking vacation time. Education may not pay the best but the benefits sure are nice. On top of liberal policies, free tuition, and excellent health insurance, I also get 6 weeks vacation time, and 2 weeks sick time each year (and they roll over!).
This space for rent...
ago?
About 8 years ago, Congress decided that too many IT people were being classified as salaried and changed the FLSA definitions to strictly limit who could be salaried in the IT world and who couldn't. I had a couple friends who were working as PC repair bench technicians, making $27,000 per year, salaried, no overtime. When the law was changed, their employer was forced to convert them to hourly.
At the time, the thinking was the definitions were so strict that it would pretty much limit salaried, non-supervisory IT to those individuals who were so skilled that they base pay was in the six figure range.
This is obviously an attempt to find a middle ground between the two extremes.
Seriously,
How old are you? 67
McDonald's has to pay a full time worker $15,080
($7.25 min. wage * 40 hours * 52 weeks)
So I'd wager when you made $13K, you were either part time. Or this was a very long time ago. When you could buy a car for $6,000 instead of $20,000.
Pretty simply solution. Oh the stock exchange servers are down? Oh wait, I'm sorry you have reached your limit for my hours this week. Have fun trying to fix it yourself, and go back and read the memo's I sent saying that there was a hardware problem that I detected, but you didn't want to spend the money to replace the system, and told me to simply scrounge around for spare parts and work you magic.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
See Section 1706 of the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Another favor to IBM? Time for you yankees to get corporations out of your congress. Good thing I live in Canada!
AccountKiller
Congress needs to fix the budget, quit arguing over partisan politics and focus on bigger issues like the trade deficit manufacturing and china-russia etc stealing our secrets. Get back to work.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
No problem, just enforce 40 hour work weeks too.
Brit here, wondering a) what's so special about IT workers that they need specific legislation banning overtime? b) why do you need legislation banning overtime?
Hang on, reading TFA and extracts of the Act, am I right in thinking this does not ban OT but rather include IT with exempt "professionals" from other general legislation that makes time-and-a-half OT rate mandatory? OK, now my question is why do you need any legislation specifying OT rates? Even here in the land of insane labour laws we don't have that, and in practice it is unusual for anyone making that kind of money to get any OT - or paid at all, even as time in lieu.
Bittersweet as it is, perhaps some congratulations may be in order? It seems IT is moving towards being recognised as "professional", which is nice. Continuing down that route won't lead to anything getting better though.
2011 Slavery Reintroduced. Now regardless of skin color.
Sleeping nights at the colo on a bed of bubblewrap and cardboard... it's like being a hobo in the comfort of a climate controlled, only slightly too cold wind tunnel! To think that I'll get a salary cap for my effort just shows everybody how dedicated I am to my work!
i don't really understand why the government wants to get involved in this kind of thing in a specific industry.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
'Nuff said.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
few extra hours one week vs hour shourter next week - you don't see a problem in that?
Here on the west coast of Canada this legislation already exists. http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/esb/facshts/high_tech.htm
EA Threatened to move EA Sports somewhere else, the provincial government caved.
Your pay doesn't come from government legislation. IT industry is one of the most successful in the US and it is one of the least regulated one's. That's not a coincidence. Look at the auto workers and all the protections they enjoy, how has that worked out for them?
Your pay comes from the value you are being able to bring to your employer. When you bring a lot of value you can make a lot of money. You don't need these mandatory overtime payment laws.
Since when do salaried workers ever get paid for overtime???
At a previous employer I would routinely work overtime with the promise that overtime pay would come; when it never materialized I contacted the Ministry of Labor who helpfully pointed out that the Labor Laws regulating hours of work and overtime do not cover skilled IT works as we were paid too much (now I was paid 5 dollars an hour less than my bricklayer friend who DID get such protections, so I have no idea where the regulation pulls that out of it's ass) as long as I made "at least minimum wage" over the course of the year (averaged out over hours worked) then they could do nothing for me.
Sucks
How about this; instead of attacking IT people who are routinely exempt from overtime to begin with and who routinely work 60+ hour weeks anyway, the following bill be introduced into Congress instead:
1) Congressional salaries shall be frozen at the current level until further notice.
2) As there is no review process to determine whether the American People are getting what they paid for out of Congress, the base congressional salary shall be multiplied by their approval rating by the American people as a percentage. If they have 100% approval, they shall be paid what they're paid now. If they have 50% approval, they shall be paid half what they're paid now. If they have 10% approval, they shall be paid 10% of what they're paid now.
That seems fair to me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So much for a congressional focus on improving the unemployment rate. This bill ostensibly encourages companies to exploit existing employees more before hiring new people.
Please remember that them tubes are serviced by IT professionals and if you fuck with their money you may not receive any more internets.
Sincerely,
The angry mob of nerds outside your windows.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
What I want to know is what Hagan's real motivation is for this move. Whatever they SAY is their motivation is a flat-out lie. So let's think about what would happen if this passes. Given: You're an IT person and you can no longer be paid overtime. Can your employer force you to work past 40 hours? Technically, no, but you'd risk not getting raises or promotions if you punched out on the stroke of 5pm. Then again, your employer could do that whether or not they were paying you extra. Politicians, especially Democrats, rarely are looking out for employers interests. Couple that with hidden agendas and the goal might be to force *cough* excuse me *cough* encourage employers to higher more workers. After all, the work must be done by someone. The net effect if that happens will be more payroll taxes into government coffers and more health insurance dollars being paid into the pool plus the added political benefit of being able to say "Unemployment is dropping. I made that happen. Vote for me."
But beyond this, does the change say that you can't be paid anything past 40 hours or just that you can't be paid time-and-a-half?
If passed, this law could be challenged on constitutional grounds as a bill of attainder.
I realize it's entirely a selfish reason, but I'm on board with this. As a single father, my schedule is always difficult to work out. On the one hand, I will be there for my daughter's school and activities. On the other, I am male and thus employers see me as someone capable of putting in whatever hours they deem necessary. This would allow me to pack in the hours when I can, and take shorter days when I have to.
I realize this is very case specific, but god damn it's about time SOME laws work in my favor.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Who get's overtime in IT anyway? Being working in IT for 15 years and never heard of it. I'm salaried, always have been, not "hourly". I work 40 - 70 hours a week and do what ever it takes to get the job done. Most IT jobs are 24x7 in reality. That's how business works ( or should work ). If I don't like my salary or conditions I'm free to walk out the door at anytime and go work somewhere else or for myself. IT is not fastfood, it's not factory work, it's really kinda easy and usually pays pretty well considering what you are required to do. All that being said, government should stay out of business and let each company and person negotiate on their own. Unions are one of the biggest problems in our society. They encourage mediocrity and laziness and most of them are crooked and corrupt. Now stop reading Slashdot and get back to work. :)
Make your voice heard: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/s1747
They promoted the whole IT dept to management. :/
Let's also eliminate it for police, firemen, government officials, and anyone else who does a crappy menial job that they should be dedicated to 24\7 regardless of their base salary. That's more than fair I think!
Dear Congressperson:
I oppose S. 1747: Computer Professionals Update Act because we IT professionals were overworked, understaffed and underfunded before the economy got bad and now you want to eliminate overtime pay for us? Yeah, that's a good way to promote job creation in a sector that requires highly skilled labor. This bill would have a crippling effect on our economy in two ways: short-term it would cause unrest among IT workers which could lead to walkouts by employees and considerable damage to the nation's productivity and critical infrastructure, long-term you would see the formation of a national or international union of IT workers that would work collectively to overturn these laws, while at the same time possibly pushing talented people away from the profession. This bill is a horrible idea and only further demonstrates the contempt of the ignorant for IT professionals that, for the last few decades, have bolstered the economy and continue to provide innovation and a world competitive edge to the United States.
If the majority of your working involves data on the computer and you make 50k a year then be very afraid.
I can further see them withholding health insurance later on. The truth is if your in IT then your a consultant/contractor period.
They really need to reform the contracting laws so that people have to keep log books for working hours and must charge the equivalent of overtime. Just changing the laws would be enough since after a person is let go from a steady gig they could easily sue for backpay, interest, and penalties. Furthermore consultants and self employed people need to be able to collect unemployment insurance.
With computers there are time stamps on everything we do and it's easy enough to show a virtual paper trail if you discipline yourself. Even better if you work with other IT people that similarly weren't compensated. All your have to do is show a record for no overtime paid and a jury will believe you.
Status: This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Explanation: Introduced bills and resolutions first go to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee. [Last Updated: Dec 2, 2011 6:23AM]
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The problem with picking a specific trade is that the majority won't care about it, so they can pass laws that only hurt small groups of people without taking a big reputation hit, thus transforming democracy into mob rule.
this does nothing for the interests of the people, this is corporate pandering, nothing more.
corporations != people
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Many IT works are ALREADY classified as Professional emps, by the existing 2004 definitions:
Current Law:
1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;:
Proposed Law:
‘(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
‘(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Proof: I get four weeks paid vacation.
really ? ... ... no kiding :) sometimes it's great to work in an other country (France for instance)
I have eight
and to go back to the subject :
if you don't agree with not payed overtime, just don't do overtime. If it's not payed for, it can't be mandatory.
I always wonder if the lawmakers first come up with a cool title and see what kind of law they can pass to screw things up.
This doesn't seem to affect me as a contractor. I still bill the hours I work. It does encourage me to never be a full time employee again, but I was kind of heading down that road anyway. Perhaps I'll finally incorporate. I can't get away with the tax avoidance Google does -- that only works if you're avoiding billions of dollars a year in taxes, not thousands. It still seems like it'd have a lot of benefits.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Is to publicly behead Kay Hagan (D) from North Carolina.
I will be glad to do it.
I like the idea! Too many 80 hour weeks in the IT field..Time to hire some more people..Only thing is I worry about is that they may get works from places like India and China to work for more hours for cheaper.. So some guidelines in this are are also necessary!
I propose we cut ALL their taxpayer paid benefits, retirement and make them pay for it themselves Wanna see how quickly the rest of us get better benefits and retirement packages. These lazy bums won't/can't do their job in Washington, yet they expect US to pay the bill for their perks.
I work with computers and am concerned that SB 1747 will encourage the formation of unions among information technology workers.
I strongly oppose unionization, but many information technology workers are saying "This is the last straw." They are already stressed from working long hours, frequently requiring being woken in the middle of the night or weekend work. Overtime pay is often the only commitment they receive from their employer. If this bill passes, employers will have the option of paying straight time for extra hours worked, and it is very unlikely that a company would pass up an opportunity to save money.
I urge you to withdraw your support of this bill to preserve competition in our industry.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2555346&cid=38238582
At least, I think that's the "rationale" You are taking more than your fair share of available work. This should discourage such greed.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
You know what the job is, what the salary is and what the hours are. People of a given skill level will just demand higher pay based on projected loss of over time. That is how we function in development. 80K job in a low pressure, high benefits big corp = ok. 80K in a crazy startup environment = crap. Adjust down if living outside bay area and your living costs are lower.
Why does anything need to be done to accelerate this process?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Bonehead. Time to vote her out. I'll be keeping this in mind the next time I go to the polls (I live in NC). That's uncharacteristic of a Democrat. Proof they're as much in the pocket of 'big money' as Republicans are.
I just checked, and Maine no longer shows such an exemption in title 26. But they adopted the same wage limit ($27.63) for some exemptions, I think.
I can't find any exemptions in Arizona. I wonder if these were ever widespread...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Luckily, if they're just counting web bandwidth, we can just use other protocols, or tunnel through other protocols.
Duh! The Internet is not equivalent to the Web. Especially since BitTorrent takes up a large part of the bandwidth used these days. (And perhaps video/audio streaming protocols, but I'm not sure if those are primarily HTTP-based or using other protocols (RTSP, RTP, etc.) these days.)
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Not in IT or software, ever. Not for doctors, lawyers, dentists, actual engineers, architects, plumbers, electricians, etc. You know why? Because they can compete against the big company in one form or another. The whole concept of unions in plumbers, electricians and similar trades is to actually keep competition down. Heaven forbid someone do plumbing who hasn't apprenticed (ie. slaved for) some master plumber. This is also why IT has fought unions. Unions/guilds/etc. are there publically "to increase quality of the trade", but really they are there to protect jobs even from people who want the job. However in a profession where you are mostly qualified by degree or open association (bars, license boards) to actually do work or things like technologies that move to quick (I have 10 years experience in HTML5, btw!.) prices will never deflate past upper middle income. H1B is the only thing bringing down IT salaries and that still isn't too significant thanks to foreign degree shops making most unhirable. Heck if you are skilled you will make six figures within a couple of years easily in any actual profession (unless you are H1B).
Now upper middle income can drop and have in proportion to inflation thanks to the fed and the fact few 'jobs' today can be considered skilled and no union can prevent that fact from effecting salaries to the point that they are just barely middle income now.
It is time for us to form a Union. We need protections for IT workers.
Or, these politicians will think they have open season on us, and can start setting federal limits on our salaries too. We need to unite. Enough is enough. It started with the 2004 Exempt workers amendment. Now they are carrying it forward with this.
Isn't this one of the reasons Joseph Stack flew his plane into the IRS building a while back? At least, According to his manifesto it was one reason. How is this good for anyone but corporate entities?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586581,00.html
Win if you can... Lose if you must... But always CHEAT!
Well it's about time they found a way to bring our IT industry in line with the Manufacturing industry in this country. Let's send our tech work overseas as well!
One of us is never as dumb as all of us, and all of us is never as dumb as congress.
Not in the real world; in my experience, understaffed IT depts are abused with forced 24/7 on-call outside the job description or not they are not properly compensated upfront for officially being on call all the time. Not to mention all the crazy demands put upon them. Extra hours happen routinely because management figures the extra cost is less than another employee. It is not greedy employees, they are the victims; especially, when the economy is bad. When I did it, I never got overtime and they thought little of making me put in the "comp time" (later they tried to limit comp time because we'd build up months of payed vacation time! I should have sued them before I left because it had to be illegal since the contract specified it.)
Overtime pay should be so high that management hires additional staff; actually, if you are concerned about greedy workers then it should contain a large TAX so then neither side can abuse the situation. Business people seem to hate TAX more than they hate their workers.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
This is the single most important thing to understand about domestic politicy in the US: that in real terms, median wages have been almost perfectly static for forty years. I've seen the numbers cited in a number of places, such as this brilliant chart from Randall Munroe:
https://www.xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-1910&y=-3118&z=5
With rising costs for housing, health care, and education, the standard of living for most people in the US has declined even as per capita productivity has more than doubled. We are creating more wealth, and enjoying less of it.
Part of what is remarkable about this is that the historical trend, until the early 1970s, was for wages to rise as productivity rises, and the upward trend for both was unbroken. A graph shows that increasing productivity has continued its upward curve, but real wages sharply leveled off in the early 1970s.
This proposed law is part of the ongoing effort to escalate the transfer of wealth and power from the poor to the rich.
Been working in the IT field for 15 years and I've never seen overtime. Even when I was called in during the middle of the night or working the 60 hour week to get the schedule done on time.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
I own a small IT outsourcing shop.
Work comes in a trickle or a deluge, no in-between.
There will be overtime hours worked, it is the nature the beast.
It is a competitive business, I cannot put in higher bids and expect to get any business.
Since each hour of US overtime would be a large loss to me, I just cannot afford to do it. I will not do it.
I was using two solutions to this:
1. US coders working on Salary + Bonus, where working more = more bonus.
2. Offshore coders on straight hourly wages.
The recession hit, and I could not afford the high base salaries for the US guys.
I laid off 8 US coders - after exhausting the business accounts and my personal savings.
I still have the offshore guys. They stuck with me even though their hours went in half.
Business has picked up, but I have not hired any more US coders.
I would love to hire more guys in the US.
However!
I have not managed to afford to get health insurance for my family yet - next year looks good for getting that going again.
Obamacare gives me nightmares: Absolute requirement to provide unaffordable care for US workers.
Mandatory overtime bonus pay = too risky to depend on US workers for projects with low profitablity - and this economy is only producing low profitability projects so far.
The answer to all these problems is to go make more money and not assume any more risk.
And that means not hiring any US coders, although I would really love to do that.
Well, this is basically the #2 punch in the set. Years back....IT guys could easily be classified at non-exempt, and paid hourly....and get 1.5 time for OT.
The Feds didn't like this...specifically for their contractors...the guys just plain worked too much.
So, IT guys were reclassified as 'professionals' just like doctors, lawyers, managers..etc.
However, still...on contracts...you CAN get straight time for OT hours. There are usually hoops to jump through to get all this approved by the gov. in advance of work...PITA.
I guess they're wanting to close this one off too.
I haven't understood why they do it for private sector and for gov contracting....maybe they have to do it for everyone and can't target just the federal contractors.
It doesn't seem fair, like you said...that they can target one class of worker, but this isn't the first time it has happened.
One thing they may be looking at...as we continue forward, with more and more tech taking over in ALL business....most everything is related to IT in some fashion...and they are maybe trying in broad fashion to use this to cut costs.
Of course, let's target the guys who actually do work...rather than the management.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Congress shouldn't prohibit overtime pay private employers decide to pay.
But private employers shouldn't pay overtime except in rare crisis situations. They should hire more people to handle the extra work if they've got it regularly. Even if those extra people are part time. They choose overtime instead because they don't have to pay the overhead beyond direct pay of the extra worker, even though overtime costs more per hour. It doesn't take long for overtime, which is typically +50% (or +100%+ if past 10-12+ hours a day or on weekends/holidays), to cost more than the 10-25-50% typical overhead for the extra worker. Plus having more workers means more flexibility. Having that much extra work should mean the business is making more money.
The workers make the money for the business by doing the work, though they're brought the opportunity by the business (and the whole affair is due to paying customers). If you have enough work for more workers, you should get them and use them to get more work, which means more money for everyone.
--
make install -not war
Whoa... so this kind of seems like codifying indentured servitude. It's a stupid law, written by people who don't understand the labor market.
I think it's one thing if an employer simply doesn't choose to offer overtime to their "employees working in computer related occupations", because the market can (and does) sort that out. For instance...
In my current role, I wear many hats (like most IT folks) and part of what I do is billable to my end-clients. Because of that, I have an incentive to both deliver results within the scope and budget of my projects, as well as sell my clients on additional services, expanded scope, etc. and manage my team to do the same. I suppose an incentive plan would be more attractive, but incentive plans are also harder for many organizations to figure out in a manner that aligns relevant stakeholders. Thus, being compensated hourly works for me, because those 70 hour work weeks increase my gross compensation in an obvious manner.
As for how the market sorts this out... because I have an incentive via hourly compensation to deliver results aligned with the objectives of my shareholders, I'm motivated to do precisely that. Now, we all have IT/Programming/Dev counterparts (folks in this comment thread) working in IT related fields as an overhead function everything from... the education system, and local government, to large corporations. I can completely understand why businesses don't want to compensate their overhead IT employees hourly - because they already view the fact they employ IT people as necessary evil - and shareholders see you as a drain on their dividend checks (or growth). So of course shareholders don't want IT to be compensated hourly. On a long-enough time horizon, those employees in overhead roles who care about their compensation (e.g. generally the hard workers) will be motivated to seek employment in manner where they have an incentive to work 70 hour weeks OR... something else at that employeer has to trump compensation as a motivator. In a large corporation the motivator often comes in the form of promotions (and blech... titles), and those promotions tend to have higher compensation associated with them. So in that case, the motivation is still compensation... just deferred compensation. But if you're simply working in an overhead IT role that doesn't offer hourly compensation, or promotion opportunities that increase compensation - then something is holding you there... what is it? Because a free market should be motivating you to seek employment in a manner that compensates you for your time. Personally, I'm motivated by compensation and don't mind the 70 hours weeks... because I earned 20% bonus via overtime last year, which is about 15% above the "industry standard" annual compensation. Since money doubles every 7 year, that's real money.
My point... generally speaking, on a long enough time horizon, intelligent and motivated employees won't hang around in a manner that fails to compensate them for their time, and slowly a brain-drain will occur from organizations that fail to be competitive. That's why my team is full of hard working, IT folks that are generally more talented than folks I see at other companies. It's also why I work for a mid-sized employeer, instead of a mega-corporation (or in eduation).
One thing that I can guarantee... 70 hour work weeks uncompenstated are really only useful for getting your first 10,000 hours of relevant professional experience. 12 years into my profession, I'm simply not going to work 70 hours a week for average pay. I don't' see why this law if necessary - employeers who want talent will still need to provide incentive-based compensation. Failing to that, if my employeer took away my overtime because of this arbitrary law and failed to provide a more attractive incentive - I can guarantee you I wouldn't work more than the bare minimum number of hours. My projects would fail to complete on time and budget (though quality might go up), and I'd go somewhere more attractive. There's always other companies to work for (or businesses to start for yourself). In short, the government shouldn't be trying to regulate the labor market for IT resources via short-sighted and ignorant legal code.
The local unions are always behind Kay which is why she keeps getting re-elected. Tech workers (especially ones in other states) don't have a union that contributes to her campaigns, so it's okay to **** them over. Here's hoping we can get her out of there next time!
If she were smarter (and more conniving), I'd suspect that this was a way into backdoor socialism. The front door would explicitly limit the work week to 40 hours (or less) as has been failing in other countries. And thus companies would be forced to hire more people. This way, a bunch of programmers might shrug and say, "Eh, 40 hours is good enough." But I don't think she's that clever.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
Folks still get overtime?
Fortune 500 I work for has every IT/Developer/whatever in the US already salaried other than helpdesk/desktop people.
Of course just about every other position is also salaried as well, they wouldn't want to pay extra for the 70-80 hours a week they require.
Year after year record profits, joy.
My e-mail to Senator Murray:
Dear Senator Murray,
I recently was alerted to the bill as S. 1747: Coputer Professionals Update Act. I do not believe Congress should be limiting the pay of hardworking middle class Americans.
Information Technology workers are often required to work most holidays, weekends and evenings to update and maintain systems during brief times they are not in use. These individuals should be rewarded for this sacrifice of time spent away from families and friends to keep important systems updated and running. Thes jobs require expensive technical training and certification to achieve, which these individuals also need to re-coup, along with the rapidly rising costs of living and taking care of their families.
I would request that you not only kill this bill, but propose striking the current language in section 213(a)(17) as well, freeing the current analyst positions listed to also earn their fair pay.
Thank you for your time in this matter.
Sincerely,
K. Reid Partlow
I was pulling 60-70 hour weeks for 5 solid years because nobody wanted to know what "a Linux is" and the company refused to let me have any time off. That was fine, albiet stupid in retrospect.
I've probably fixed his stupid Drupal site at 4am in the past because he was "losing thousands of dollars per minute" with it being down. What an ass.
I know you're joking, but winning a seat in Congress is like winning free tickets to an insider trading buffet. Also all the wonderful laws we have in the US thay prohibit insoder trading don't applt to those in Congress...
Google the book " Throw Them All Out" for more depressing details
Here's to the crazy ones
There was a time when the democrats stood for the little guy...
Obviously the sponsor of this POS legislation isn't for the little guy.
D or R - it doesn't matter any more. They're two sides of the same coin.
I'd love to see a viable second and third party so the demopublicans can be shoved aside into the scrap heap of history...
Since when do salaried workers get overtime? I haven't been paid overtime in over 10 years.
I thought that salaried workers were already exempted from receiving overtime pay? They get a fixed salary regardless of the hours they work.
If this isn't proof enough to everyone that both Democrat and Republican parties are both completely beholden to the corporate master I don't know what is. There is no way in hell a member of the old (real) Democrat party of 60 years ago would have done this. The only remaining step for Democrats like these to become full-fledged corporate-whore Republicans will be to join in on union busting efforts.
I'm shocked that there are so many posts related to action that effect the pay for Congress. The $160K they get every year is nothing compared to the money they get from the businesses that present them with the ideas (and authorship) of bills like this. Look at who is contributing the most campaign donations to the sponsors of this bill and you'll probably find out who really wants this passed into law. n2ch
The exemption is from overtime PAY, not overtime HOURS... You (the IT staff) will still be working 50-60 hours in a week, you just won't be getting paid time-and-a-half for it. You will be paid your normal hourly wage... They (management) can't make you work for free because you are not salaried.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs23.pdf...
You will not be going home at 5pm. They will not be hiring more staff to cover you going home at 5pm.
Across the board, when faced with relatively high unemployment and no strong indication of that correcting itself, the answer is *not* to make it easier for employers to stretch a workforce thinner, causing fewer people to work longer hours. If anything, should take action that encourages more workers employed with fewer hours. Create a tendency for more people to be employed and for the pay to be more evenly distributed...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I build and install beautiful metal cabinets. As an added service, I also install equipment inside of them, configure and maintain said equipment.
But I am a metalworker.
Have gnu, will travel.
Does this also exempt the child labor provisions?
It makes you wonder how people so stupid can dupe enough voters to win election.
...What bothers me most about this is the hard-coded, arbitrary value. I don't exactly agree with the concept (I'm more of a free-market guy) but if you're gonna do it, at least base the dollar amount on some other value, like some fraction of GDP or per Capita income, or even a multiple of minimum wage. Having to reprocess the bill every 5-10 years due to inflation seems a lot like a recompile, and what's worse it may just not happen at all!
No overtime pay for people who tend to work A LOT of overtime will result in a lot of disgruntled tech-savvy employees with access to valuable and sensitive data and systems. What do you think the less scrupulous IT workers will do? I hope they like increases in cybercrime and identity theft because that is exactly what this will give us.
I Work out of Canada B.C. We already have this regulation where IT or computer related workers do not get overtime pay. It sucks we still get expected to work the extra hours but only get normal pay for it. No time and a half or additional pay for working past 40 hours a week or more than 9 hours a day, normal hourly pay only. The provincial NDP government in British Columbia implemented the No Overtime for computer based businesses to try to lure Hi-Tech, Call Centers and Computer Based Businesses to B.C. They used the reasoning that Computer was was easy and required no real activity that would make you tired. Kinda like a Fat Cat Politician.
Good company's still pay over time regardless to keep company moral up. Businesses that are trying to save a buck on the backs of there employees don't. I've even seen a few company's get designated as IT / computer related just so they did not have to pay overtime to anyone. The CEO's VP's and upper management didn't care as most of them are on salary. If you thought the IT department was bitter and mean before wait till they are not getting payed to work past 40 hours a week without any additional agreements or time off, and they see you are getting payed,
So to My American friends this is something that needs to be snuffed out with a vengeance. Or you will come to regret it and be seen as second class workers because you work in the IT technology field. It really does suck. It does not matter if your in the public or private.
I almost never write my Representative. This one pissed me off enough to do so. Here's the text. I think ALL of you should get envelopes addressed and do something. Anyone else planning on writing in?
Dear Rep. Hagan:
I have worked in the IT field my entire life. I worked 60-80 hours a week for several years with a low, fixed salary. I was expected to deal with issues affecting networks that ran all sorts of big companies that affect the day-to-day lives of people like you. Want to order a pizza from Dominos? Want to send an email? Want to trade stocks online? How about use your credit card to purchase something at a retail chain?
Those were the types of systems I had to deal with. If something broke at 5 PM, 7 PM, 9 PM, 2 AM, 5 AM, on the weekend, ANYTIME, I was expected to stop what I was doing and get it FIXED. If it weren't for people like me, and IT workers in general, your life would be far more inconvenient. Because of those systems, yes, I had a job, but work was my LIFE. For several years, literally, I didn't manage to go on one date that was not interrupted by a work call. I didn't have a single weekend without my plans being interrupted. Because holidays require coverage too, I only managed to be home on Christmas Eve to see my family ONE TIME during my career as a network engineer.
Rambling about excessive job stress aside, this CPU act should NOT go into law. The IT field is already unforgiving, stressful, and underpaid enough. If workers are expected to be available 24x7, then they should have a fair expectation of being paid fairly for those hours. Think about that next time you pull money out of an ATM or check your email. There's several IT guys working in various capacities somewhere that help make that happen. And if it's not working at 2 AM, somebody is awake fixing it.
Thank you
This woman can't possibly be in her right mind. Some angry employer probably approached her with this stupid idea... but I digress.
I've long been told that IT workers (at least, in the State of MA) are not allowed to form a Union. Really? I think it's time to change that...
Some of us may be well-paid, this is true, but we are often overlooked in terms of how much work goes in to what we do... and how important it ends up being at the end of the day.
You can always tell a bought and paid-for politician; they're completely out of phase with their parties' belief set.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> It seems comprehensive in its description of what types of IT work qualify
Wonder which lobbyist firm helped them write it. Certainly wasn't done by "on-site experts".
Bark less. Wag more.
I was once a unionized IT employee working for government.
You start out with a 6-month probation period. Everyone makes it past 6 months - the only employee I witnessed who didn't make it six months was a dude who got arrested for public lewdness at the library a week after he got hired. After that, if there's ever a layoff, it's first in first out, otherwise you're pretty much set for life. You don't have to keep your skills up. Every year for about 12 years you you get a pay raise ('step increase') until you max out your pay grade. On the way you try to get promoted to a higher pay grade. Once you hit a good pay grade (after zero or one or two promotions) you pretty much can never get demoted. Even if you start doing absolutely horrible work, all that will happen is you will get lateraled over into a position with no responsibility where you can do no-work instead of horrible-work.
Overtime is something that employees actively seek out and never turn down. Your job is 9 to 5 and anything you do after 5 (like rebooting a server) is considered OT, even if from 9 to 5 all you do is chat on the phone with your girlfriend.
Overtime might make sense for jobs in construction, or for grunt-level IT work like helpdesk, but for most IT staff it's not a good model.
How do we get someone kicked out of the party? If this person is behaving like a republican, than isn't there a means or process to get her expelled from the democrat party?
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I experienced something similar here in Canada with a previous employer that decided one day to do the same along with not paying for pager duty. The day that it started I gathered my support team together and I explained that we would leave at 4:30 PM sharp regardless of the workload or crisis. The same day, I went to see my director and put the emergency pager on his desk (it was around 3 PM). I told him that if we were not going to be paid we would not answer it and wished him good luck as there were some upgrades scheduled that evening and we expected problems with them. The expression on his face was priceless but he sympathized with me as he did not agree himself with the corporate decision. He offered me time-in-lieu-of, which is basically the equivalent of time off for any overtime/after hours worked. I explained to him that it would have to apply for my whole team and it would be only short term as we worked to earn a salary, not to only to have time off, which of course would complicate work schedules even more. The sad thing is that I found out that my team was the only one to pull that off; everyone else bowed down and shut up right away, bringing morale to an all time low. I can tell you that attendance to that year’s social events (especially the Christmas party) was at an all time low. The only problem I see with this bill is that if anyone pulled off something similar as I did, there is a good chance of a desperado who will come in and do it for even less pay. Now is this the proper way to handle any infrastructure that business relies on? You get what you pay for, and if this bill makes it through it will cause a further decline of the American status which hasn’t looked too hot lately.
Is this just for those in government contracted positions? Otherwise what is the US gov't interfering in this for? Who is being protected by this legislation who actually needs protection? This is bizarre.
comes from as it applies to Democrats.
"Work with computers" Just who does that NOT apply to? No more overtime in Taco Bell anymore, if this passes.
.63 an hour...
This is a pointless bill because all of the IT people that make that much think they're too important and aren't even in the office 8 hours a day.
My guess is only a few IT systems in the world would last more than a week without love and attention from system administrators. The most likely result of legislation like this is IT unionization and strikes. See how much the 1% screams when their computerized trading floors stop working.
Or at least, I'm sure that's the theory. I think that governments/financial institutions (There's no difference now) are starting to fear the "million geek army." Engineering types typically don't take political control well, and have an annoying tendency to help the rebels (whoever the rebels might be). Impoverish IT engineeers and you make them more amenable to bribery and coercion.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I currently work overtime without additional pay. As a result, the company is continually encouraged not to hire. This kind of BS is ruining the job market period. Why hire when you can work everyone to death?!
I hope this does pass, just so that when one of the people pushing it call the IT guy for a computer problem that could be critical to their job they can respond with: "Sorry, I've already worked all my hours, and you made overtime illegal. I'll be back in next week."
I can't be arsed to look up the federal law (and state laws will vary) but I was discussing this last week with a coworker and did look up the law. A bunch of upmodded posts here mention that salaried means no overtime. This simply is not the case. Hugely common, widely mistaken belief.
You're misreading the bill. It does not say anything about not working overtime. It removes the requirement that you get paid more for working overtime.\
You'll still be working just as much, or possibly more, but you'll get less money for that time.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Sure I agree to no over time as long as every single public official agrees to no pay. That or I will just leave when my forty is up.
Guess who is not being re-elected next term. Someone forget that their voting machines are managed by IT workers or computer related services.
USA! USA! USA!
I bet there are a lot of us not getting OT pay and maybe not giving 100% to our unloyal employers who would off-shore us if they could.
I haven't gotten real overtime since I was on a first level help desk (about 15 years ago). Now I'm having managers try to get me not to use my vacation time, promising me that I can use it "next year sometime", but work off the clock for them this year.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Journalists go forth and investigate the corruption.
You're an asshole.
It's their solution to the 'skills shortage'.
Kay Hagan seemed to be a misguided, SOPA-supporting disappointment at first, but now I'm convinced she's intentionally trying to bring North Carolina's RTP technical economy to a halt. My guess is that some time in her past, a programmer broke her heart, and she's taking it out on all of them.
I'm ashamed to admit I voted for her in 2010, but I cannot wait for the chance to vote her out in '16. The Republicans can put anyone or anything against her, and I have to say I'll probably check the box.
Only if we can limit the CEO's pay to under $10million.
Capitalism is great and would work best WITHOUT all kinds of government intervention. The pendulum can swing both ways until the "invisible hand" of the free market finds the perfect spot and the pendulum slows down. Watch "Free to Choose" with Milton Freidman which can be found in its entirety on YouTube.
In my opinion, most of the laws introduced to 'tweak' our economic system end up doing more harm than good.
Many of the lobbyists are paid by big business. They work to get laws passed to help out their employer. All of this is so expensive and complicated and such as waste of resources.
I do believe that some regulation is required to protect the employees. (Look at how employees were treated before OSHA or unions were formed) I do not see a good reason why IT workers should be any different than workers in other professions.
In Europe the work week is less than 40 hours on average and they tend to get more vacation. (Holiday that is)
I used to work very long hours as a salaried employee without thinking twice about it. I realized at some point that my time is worth something even if I would be relaxing instead of work working. You are at least partially responsible for managing your own work/life balance. Too many IT workers feel that they should work long hours even if it is not required by their employer. (I was not ‘required’ to work long hours; I did it because I felt responsible for the work)
All the laws on the planet cannot change your work environment as much as your attitude towards a work/life balance can.
Before you follow this article's lead and go off half-cocked thinking this bill eliminates overtime pay for IT workers, maybe you should go read the bill that was introduced _and the current text of the USC that it's modifying._
Here's the relevent text of the "CPU Act":
SEC. 2. AMENDMENT TO THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938.
Section 13(a)(17) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 213(a)(17)) is amended to read as follows:
`(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
`(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
`(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
`(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
`(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).'.
The current text of that section currently reads as follows (retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000213----000-.html):
"(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and
who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour. "
I am not a lawyer, but the change isn't to exempt IT workers from overtime. It's to refine the verbiage of who is classified as an exempt IT worker. It seems the terms make the specification more broad, but there is the addition of a minimum salary requirement which might free some employees from the exemption.
If overtime is banned for IT workers how about industry and all other kickbacks, "gifts" and pork-barrelling being banned for senators. If IT workers have to live on their basic salary why shouldn't senators have to live on their basic stipend?
Just in case you didn't notice, IT is an employment ghetto. All of the gains of the labor movement 40 hour work weeks, 5 day work weeks, overtime pay, vacation have disappeared in IT. IT is a cost center so nobody wants to dump money into it unless there is some crisis. Add in to that the fact that most organizations are solely focused on cost reductions, forcing IT to make unpopular changes to service levels and technology that generally leaves everyone pissed off.
The numbers are simple: you can get basically the same quality and quantity of product (be that code, widgets, or most other things) from foreign labor, all for considerably less cost.
If that was true, then I guess all the IT talent must be constantly migrating to countries that pay lower and lower wages? I doubt that. Outsourcing is only about profit. They don't care if the quality goes down, as long as they still make a profit.
This is why businesses outsource, and it's tough to even blame them: like anyone engaging in trade, even consumers, they're merely looking to get the best value for the money they spend.
It's easy to blame companies that have money to bribe congress to screw over the citizens they are supposed to be serving. It's easy to blame companies that pay the senior executives ridiculous salaries while they complain about how IT makes almost 1/20th of their salary. It's not like senior executives are 20 times smarter or twenty times stronger or faster. And they don't pass the savings to the customers! It goes into their fat pockets! It's too bad we can't outsource senior management.
That leaves only one option: lower the cost of American labor. As an IT worker myself, I'm no more a fan of this than anyone else on this site, but it is by far the most, if not the only, realistic solution.
IT worker in what country? Obviously not the United States. With the constant threats of lay-offs and outsourcing and the high cost of living, I have never heard of any IT working thinking that their pay needs to be lowered!
Get together like electing Obama get money from millions of people and buy what ever company is buying congressmen and fire everybody and let there competition get whatever it had dump assets like spoiled milk. Bet this don't have to happen more than once and big corporations will steer this is how you commit suicide not by laws.
Voting them out just brings the next greedy hand to grease. This is a much better way.
I was under the impression that employee compensation was set by individual companies, and that the extent of government involvement was to set the minimum wage as a level below which you can't hire someone. Is there some special law in this state directing who is allowed to be offered OT and who isn't? (or conversely, who must be given OT pay?)
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Wouldn't this apply to any non unionized worker?
( and a stupid idea too )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That the government invented these things?
Deleted
Why are IT. computer workers singled out , period? I also agree that technical workers should unionize.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
It's fine. It's essentially a salary cap for middle class.
That means we can also cap the CEO's salary too? Oh nooo's, I've just declared class warfare!
Bill O'Reilly has already dispatched Jesse Waters to perch above my stall to drop in the next time I take a crap.
We have no union to protect our interests at an organisational level, so our destinies will always be dictated by those that do.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
At my company, even the existing "non-overtime / exempt" allows the employer to put forth such abuse to IT employees that there were 4 recorded suicides out of the same building in a year. Oh... and that was when they treated their employees "better".
When you have a situation where an employer can ask for any number of hours as a condition of employment, it is ripe for abuse. It prolongs the buffer zone in which they can lay off IT workers, and pile the work on so 12-16 hour days are not uncommon. Meanwhile the folks left deal with the stress of the workload, no personal time for non work related responsibilities, and the constant nag in the back of their mind: "I'm I next to get the pink slip?" At a minimum, I know of several folks--including myself--developing stress related illness. Some of this is non-recoverable and will take years off your life.
My recommendation is to send the legislation straight to /dev/null, throw these buggers out at the next election, and push for actual improvements in working conditions. (Obviously things will have to be sequenced carefully to avoid an even stronger corporate rush to off-shore more IT work.)
-----------------
Change (n) - The actualization of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
What do you recommend to do to work toward voting out a representative in a safe seat district whose incumbent routinely landslides with 80 percent of the popular vote?
Guess how this is going to be spun? My guess is this:
"Those couch-potatoes who do nothing but type all day are overpaid. They're part of the problem! See, we ARE doing something!"
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
...because after a few major banks, insurance companies and hedge funds find that their entire bottom lines have been donated to
world charities, disaster relief funds and other good causes, things might settle down.
How about a bill to get Congress off their big fat asses to actually DO something useful for American PEOPLE for a change.
Go ahead and try it. I can write a nice, nasty virus program for every one of the idiots that votes for something this stupid. How about chopping down a senator's salary instead (and removing his per diem cash, too)?
Professional software engineers and IT workers these days are in a competitive market, not just individually, but as entire teams as offshore work becomes more attractive. I often put in far more than 40 hours in a week, because I know that failure to get projects done when required, results in not only my job at risk, but our entire team. Our company has offices in the US as well as India, China, and other emerging markets. They set goals for how much head-count on a team is in the US vs over seas. If our local development team fails to meet the targets, we know that not only our local business is at risk, but next years budget is at risk, as they can push to take more dollars overseas. When we were first acquired, within the first year, we had to cut 15% of our staff and replace them with three times as many people in India.
Programers are generally not aware of it but this law with just this amount has been on the books for over a decade. What's happening here is not the LAW is new, but the AMOUNT the law specifies is being effectively back-dated to pre2000 or so. The law specifies that,nationally the minimum hourly wage for IT workers who use :"creativity and judgement" in their jobs is the amount specified.
What that gets companies is safe harbor from having to pay time and a half when the hours go over 40.
Nothing in the current law explicitly states that on the 41st hour , you're NOT owed another 26 bucks. This may be what this NEW law is trying to establish or clarify.
You should also know that this is a national law and individual states have their own, HIGHER hourly pay requirements. California's is in the neighborhood of 45 or 48 dollars an hour now.
So this law, which as I say has been on the books for over a decade defines a national , if puny, minimum wage for programmers and others who use their own judgement and creativity (that part's in the law) in the course of their duties.
You should also note that if you're paid LESS than this amount now or in the past you have a tidy lawsuit you can bring against your employer. Basically, anyone paying less than this and NOT requiring you to punch in and punch out is screwed.
The court will 1) take YOUR estimation of how many hours you think worked over 40 for however long you worked there and then 2) see to it you get the difference between what you were paid and what you're owed - time and half for every hour worked over 40 .
Note also that if you worked less than 40 then they can pay you 7.50 an hour if you'll take it. The "minimum" is what they need to pay you to reach safe harbor to exempt them from time and half for hours worked over 40.
I sincerely hope this sets employment lawyers telephone jingling all over this nation.
Thank you, and good night.
Some people will do almost anything for a campaign donation from Indian Outsourcing firms.
I don't know why they need this legislation, they've been screwing me for 40 years.I have never gotten overtime pay except for times I was employed as a contractor and that was just because the contracting company wasn't going to give away my services for free. 50-60 hour weeks, 24 hour shifts... are they trying to get us to unionize?
Overtime makes sense when you're working in https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies
Slashdot = Sarcasm
They are still screwed for the week or two that it will take the new hire to get up to speed on how that first single box is configured, what it connects to, what applications run on it, etc., let alone the other hundreds of systems which will take the better part of 6 months to 2 years to learn (even with people there to mentor), and a heck of a lot longer when all the IT guys have left. Being down for extended periods of time will cost a heck of a lot more than it would have to simply pay the people who keep the critical infrastructure that your company needs running appropriately.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
It appears I've got a better understanding of US politics than US residents :(
Unions don't have a thing to do with this.
I'm not in a Union, but I also don't suffer the delusion that the Unions are lurking in the shadows eating the puppies of children with cancer and hatching conspiracies.
Many see IT people as universal interchangable widgets so won't think that far ahead and would rather see the company lose a lot of money than call you back and admit they were wrong. Those that do think ahead probably wouldn't cut the overtime in the first place or would offer some other form of incentive to get people to work late if required (eg. time off).
You mean the incredibly insane idea that instead of doing something or not doing something you have the third choice of doing something so incredibly fucking badly that it's not worth doing at all?
By necessity, businesses and their managers are mercenaries.
To defend themselves, their employees must be also. That means outside business interests (yes even conflicts of interest) as an insurance policy and to build capital, because your labor is a commodity. And all commodities deflate in value over time due to increasing efficiency of tools.
Grow your capital and develop alternate income streams to replace your declining labor value. Why don't most people understand and acknowledge this basic fact of life ?
FOLKS, IT IS WHAT IT IS. GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND.
Quite obviously there is no unemployment in the US. That is why we need to eliminate overtime. Actually it will be handled like the biannual psuedo time travel event because congress is involved. Before you leave clocks are turned back five hours.
It's already this way in Florida.
FYI
Doesn't sound any different. I seldom work more that 37.5 hours a week with the odd day being 12 hours when I am on site at far away places.
My salary seems to compensate me well enough.
Politicians not only want to macro-manage my life (money supply / interest rate), but also micro-manage it. Next they'll tell me I can't smoke pot...
I believe that the Senator is looking at worksharing. If you eliminate overtime pay, you would need to hire extra individuals and that would do wonders for IT unemployed.
As an alternative, labour laws could change as follows. Max overtime is 8 hours following an 8 hour shift, with at least 12 hours of rest between, and for a maximum of 3 days.
I would not want to see work being sent offshore.
Which company currently sets their IT wages at $27.63?
Because that magic number is awfully specific.
That would make hiring people here more competitive than outsourcing, which will result on more people hired here, higher salaries.
This is when companies will lobby to increase the cap on H1B.
On the other hand. 40 hours per week is the optimal point for amount of work done per hour. If you are not effectively paying per hour anymore, it makes sense to shoot for optimal point for amount of work done per week, which is at about 50 hours or so. Anything higher than that means either your employer is stupid or your work is not very intellectually demanding and you can do it in your sleep.
https://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons
Big thanks to Ford and others.
IT worker in what country? Obviously not the United States. With the constant threats of lay-offs and outsourcing and the high cost of living, I have never heard of any IT working thinking that their pay needs to be lowered!
No one wants their pay to be lowered. I don't either, and that's why I struggle with this: I'm not satisfied with any answer yet, but this is the closest, being the only one thus far that doesn't reduce to mere socioeconomic aesthetics or base eudaimonia.
Assuming this bill were to pass, what would happen if all IT people across the country, and I do mean all (or hope for at least 80%), just walked off the job until this bill was squashed/repealed? All IT industry just stops? What would happen to the country? I think congress would be hard pressed to do anything but rip the bill up in order to beg us all to go back to work as life as we know it would stop without all of us. Electricity would stop. Financial systems would stop. Traffic would probably stop as well. Doing a mass walkout would be a good way to show that it isn't right to fuck with IT. We work hard to gain our skills and, unlike almost every other profession, we have to continue to work hard to maintain those skills. Because of that, there's no reason we have to be treated like crap and centered out just because the companies who pay us don't like having to do so. Enough is enough. This must be nipped now or times will become so unbearable for IT workers that it could potentially cause a nationwide meltdown anyway.
When it comes to doing a walkout. Thinking about air traffic controllers who walked out and president regean fired them all. So, what would happen in ITs case? Coudl all of IT be fired? HA. I don't think so. A mass walkout would sure make a statement; we IT are in charge. We IT make the world go 'round and not the other way 'round.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/FieldBulletins/FieldAssistanceBulletin2006_3.htm
In 2006 when minimum wage was $4.25, $27.63 was 61/2 times minimum wage.
Sometimes the goverment has too much control in private businesses. If they want to effectively control what the private businesses are doing... they should pass a bill that will decrease the number of jobs and products that are outsourced in other countries. That should help with the unemployment rate in American.
They should call this bill "Another reason to move to Canada."
but, but, corporations are people, they have no more rights, responsibilities or power than individuals, do they?
like another AC once said, corporations are people when they're being executed in texas...