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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.
And if this idjit is still there, I know I am voting THEM out. What a maroon.
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?
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
... 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.
If you want a good job vote this man OUT!
I think you mean, "vote this woman OUT".
Sure looks like...
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.
...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
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.
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??
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.
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.
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.
If you are doing work, you should get paid for it. Period.
If your employer wants to cheap out and go with "on call" instead of real staffing, they still get to pay for your labor.
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
Yeah, but the private sector owns the gov't.
How does this make sense for govn't.. isn't this a Private sector issue?
I have worked my way up from Network Tech to Director of IS... so I made the switch from hourly (non-exempt) to salary (exempt) and since then have had to deal with who is and isn't exempt.
It all comes down to what positions are considered "professional". My take on the subject has usually been that if the employee has the type of work that is difficult to measure and determine if they are truly working hard or stretching it out, then they are exempt. Exempt employees are expected to know what amount of work is truly needed and get things done in the least effort possible.
As a competent sys-admin, do you need to parse all 100MB of that log to determine the root cause of the error? How exactly does the boss know you did or didn't need to (yes a competent manager should have a clue, but it's more difficult than you think). Programming is the same way... I could hack it and get it out in a week, or be so damn picky it takes a year.
My position has usually been that people in these positions are able to determine what level of work is need to satisfy customer demand and not do unnecessary work. BUT, it is always a judgement call with IT. If you get it wrong, make a guy salary, make him work 60 hours to get a project out and he then sues, you can be held liable for back pay.
It is a difficult balance between leaving grey areas (because a lot of it is grey), and the government formally defining who is and isn't exempt. I would not immediately defame the Senator introducing the bill... they may actually be trying to do a good thing for employees. This is a messy area of personnel issues, and if they are successful in bringing clarity, all will benefit.
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.
But that is work done beyond your normal 8 hours. Are you saying, that if the boss calls you 24 hours at day at home, he doesn't have to pay you even though your extending your expertise? Fuck that, these supports calls can go on an hour often multiple of times. You basically be working several (often large amount of) hours for free. Why shouldn't they get paid for the thing support they give, which is much like what they do normally at their job. You obviously never worked in most IT environments. Excessive offcalls is extremely common and time consuming (something much more then the job itself).
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.
How bout they stop worrying about our overtime pay, and start considering getting the career politicians out on the street.
How does this make sense for govn't.. isn't this a Private sector issue?
It's a government issue because the government defines what overtime means in the first place.
If it were purely left up to the private sector, people would still be routinely working 12 hour shifts 7 days per week for base wages, like they did in the 19th century before governments got involved.
Do you think that lawyers don't bill you when you call them?
There are a lot of us, like you, that care about the quality of our work. To think
they can legislate something that actually should be between an individual and
his employer just proves we need to get over this "party" crap and start demanding
an IQ test of our politicians.
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
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.
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.)
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
Yeah, because work done from my house is something I should not be compensated for. Obviously it is the fault of those evil unions that want people to be paid when they are woken up in the middle of the night to fix computers.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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
You mean a new computer with lifetime support, right?
What's the use of yet another car...
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
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 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.
2 scenarios here. 1. If a doctor is given a pager and informed that he must come in when it beeps, he should be compensated if it beeps and he has to come in
2. If a doctor is working clinic duty, Feels concerned for a patient, and gives her his celphone number, and says "If you have any concerns call me", and that patient calls him for advice on her toe fungus, he should not be compensated as that is a favor he volunteered to do, without being told by the hospital to do so.
quit and be your own boss or become an independent farmer or an independent trader....
So what about the times during the day when things are slow and you are surfing /., should you get paid for that?
I don't see why not. If you're required to be somewhere for your job and not surfing /. in the comfort of your own home or favorite wifi-enabled establishment in the comfy garments of your own choosing, then yes, you get paid.
You don't get a refund on your car insurance or bus fare for days you didn't have much to do at work. The dry cleaner doesn't give you a break for clothes you only surfed the web in.
I am not a crackpot.
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.
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.
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...
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"
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?
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!
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.
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.........
It makes you wonder how people so stupid can dupe enough voters to win election.
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.
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.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Only if we can limit the CEO's pay to under $10million.
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.
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.)
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Change (n) - The actualization of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
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).