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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.
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?
$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"
I disagree. Yes if you pick up your smartphone and answer an IT question after hours you most certainly did work overtime. If it is after hours.. work is OVER. and you took TIME to work.
Amen brother.
I only take hourly paying jobs now. That salary shit wont fly with me.
I tried it once and it was the worst mistake I ever made.
Went from a 60k/yr hourly contract to a 48K salary position with supposedly similar pay in the form of A+ benefits like a 0% copay medical (yes zero) and free legal care and the list goes on.
I went from working 40hrs and getting regular overtime easily bringing 2400 after taxes every two weeks, to working 50-60 hour weeks with absolutely no recognition for $1450 twice a month.
The job lasted 4 months before I got the hell out of there back into a 70K hourly contract. FUCK THAT.
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
Yeah, I used to be a nut case, working 12 and 15 hour days for weeks on end... then I realized that morons who were producing shitty code and working 6 hour days + 2 hour lunches were getting the same promotions and pay increases I was, so that was a ME problem, not a THEM problem. ME is easier to fix than THEM.
8 hours work, 8 hours pay, pure and simple. Don't kill yourself over your job. If you love coding, join an open source project and contribute freely to the world, not your employer's pocket -- he/she probably doesn't care that you're working 12 hours -- you're being used.
How does this make sense for govn't.. isn't this a Private sector issue?
It *is* a private sector issue. You see, people who wanted to pay less for IT guys bribed these senators to pass this bill. The senators rubbed their hands together and agreed. Now they each have a new car.
Well, it isn't just a semantic difference if there's a contract involved, and the contract stipulates time and a half for overtime. Would it invalidate the contract?
Oh, and BTW, you guys need to unionize (I'm out of the fight, I retire in 2 years). And a thought just occurred to me -- if I were required to work overtime at my normal rate, I'd just refuse to work overtime. Fuck 'em.
The God Damned 1% and their congressional stooges are still trying to remove the American workers' rights that have been fought for, and in many cases died for them.
Too bad assassination is immoral and illegal. But despite the fact that it is, these greedy Godless bastards had damned well better watch their backs. If they don't loosen up, there's going to be violence (see the link for a short history).
Free Martian Whores!
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'd say you're naive. The "free market" (i.e. heavily tilted in favor of large companies) would settle on a wage that isn't quite enough to pay your rent and groceries, much less Internet access. How does a schedule of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week sound? That's what the "free market" used to offer, back before employment law came into being.
It was great for the owners of large companies, but it sucked for the 99%.
Don't you love it when a bill has bi partisan support. How else would we get fantastic bills like this one, the patriot act, and SOPA?
Most individuals suck at negotiating. This is a large part of the reason Unions were born in the first place.
It's not so much that most individuals suck at negotiating (which may be true), but that corporations usually have much more leverage. A corporation can say, "well, we have 100 other applicants, so we'll find someone who is more desperate than you," while the individual could be facing homelessness if they don't find a job within the next few months. You'd have to be an extraordinary negotiator to get a good deal in that situation.
Particularly in IT, you can't just bring in part timers to bridge the gap when you need more work done than your current staff can accomplish in 40 hours. Sometimes it takes a month or more to bring a new guy up to speed.
The reason they have mandatory time and a half rules is because typically the lower you are on the hourly wage scale, the more badly you need the job, and the easier you are to replace. Without this, companies would just demand 80 hours or more from their employees rather than hiring new employees. Each employee has a fixed cost, so one person doing 80 hours work is a higher profit than two employees each doing 40 hours work at the same salary. If you don't agree to that work schedule, they'll replace you, and soon all jobs in your skill range require this.
The point is to incentivize employers to maintain a reasonable work/life balance for their employees, while not totally crippling them when there's a short term work load glut. Time and a half over 40 hours strikes me as a particularly good balance. Many hourly workers are happy to have the bonus pay at that rate, while employers are typically willing to pay it since this work glut represents unusual profitability on their part. If you're consistently paying 20 hours of overtime, then you probably should increase the size of your work force.
Unfortunately most IT jobs are already overtime exempt. At first I misread the title and though, "About time they made non-IT managers eligible for overtime!" What I mentioned above about unreasonable work schedules is pretty true in many corners of the industry. If you're a software tester or software engineer, chances are you have felt pressured to donate time to the company on a regular basis. Each extra hour they can squeeze out of you just increases their ROI on your salary, so they're incentivized to find the highest number of hours they can convince their workforce to commit. In many shops, you'll be consistently found to be under-producing if you go home before 10 or 12 hours, and you may be let go as a result.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Can't help but notice how nobody from California, the most populous and technology influential state - where making $27/hr is actually a poverty pay rate, considering the cost of living.
I'd really like to know why government believes it needs to stick its nose into this industry - it should be working diligently to remove lobbyists from DC.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You mean the ammo box is the next box. You gun fetishists had your chance 10 years ago, but you never did anything. Now even with your arsenals you're easily outgunned by the military, police and national guard, who have been trained since then in fighting urban, suburban and rural militias. Lately the police have been out clubbing your fellow citizens, and will only increase the firepower to "mass lethal" when the "problem people" start fighting back.
You didn't use the soap box, the jury box or the ballot box to do anything but keep your fetish objects close. In fact you used all of them to give power to the people who have run the country into the ground.
You're never going to use your guns to fight the government. All your actions have proven otherwise, every time.
--
make install -not war
Don't you love it when a bill has bi partisan support. How else would we get fantastic bills like this one, the patriot act, and SOPA?
When is everyone gonna wake up to the fact that there are no parties anymore. Elephant or Donkey is irrelevant. The only thing that influences our government representatives, Republican or Democrat, is who happens to be paying them the best on a given issue.
I keep thinking of a scene from the movie Moon Over Parador. 2 guys are discussing who they're going to vote for where the choices are blue or red. One says, "Vote for whoever you want. It's a free dictatorship." The government of the United States no longer represents the people. It represents the corporate interests that pay them the best. The constitution has been trampled so bad it's pretty much immaterial at this point. The fact that a blatant censorship bill like SOPA/PROTECT IP can even be considered is proof of that.
Who is John Galt?
"The word bipartisan means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out." -- George Carlin
Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what has government ever done for us?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I agree that each of those have happened, but which one of those required government involvment? I'm pretty sure many if not all of those have been accomplished within the private sector also.
But since your glasses seem to be so rosy you might as well add: Oppression, Theft, False Imprissonment, Cover ups, Corruption, and Collusion to the list.
Any of those things I mentioned could happen in the private sector too, but you seemed to imply that the government was the only way those "good" things could come about and managed to leave out all the extra items that are "bad". I've added the "baddies" and readily admit the private sector could be involved with some of the same.
I'll be interested to see if if you can admit that the private sector could just of easily handled your list of goodies... It's okay if you can't. I'm just curious.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.