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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.
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?
3 of the 4 co-sponsors for the bill are republican:
Michael Bennet [D-CO]
Scott Brown [R-MA]
Michael Enzi [R-WY]
John Isakson [R-GA]
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?
... and their site is down. If only they had some IT guys who could do overtime to bring it back up...
Prk
$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.
nobody voted for him, he was appointed to replace salazar
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
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.
That's the law. Seriously, it is the law. Passed in 2003 amazingly enough.
The Califronia gov't description is the most clear. There is a Federal one too that is more difficult to read through but spells it out: IT workers get Overtime. Period.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_overtime.htm
Also it is currently in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee so if one of the following is your senator you might want to contact them to have it killed:
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Bernard Sanders (I) (I-VT)
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA)
Kay R. Hagan (D-NC)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Michael F. Bennet (D-CO)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Michael B. Enzi (R-WY)
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Rand Paul (R-KY)
Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT)
John McCain (R-AZ)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Time to offend someone
There are 5 senators, roughly half are Republican and half are Democrat. All are retarded.
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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.
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 is worth comparing this to the current law since there isn't much being changed. This doesn't prevent Overtime Pay just the requirement that Overtime be paid at the x1.5 rate, but I am sure there are more details involved. Looking at the changes breifly I don't think this will have any impact on most of us, but they did remove the section for middle managers.
---The 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.
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
They want to change it to this:
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And if you work in an at-will employment state, you get fired and re-hired with the new terms or walk.
By the way, this isn't about working overtime at your normal rate. It's about working overtime for free.
Sponsoring a build doesn't always mean you support it.
Harry Reid (D) sponsored President Obama's Job bill in the Senate, then voted AGAINST it.
This is done to bring the bill up to a vote, so it can be voted down.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
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.
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.
Yes and individuals who aren't already in exempt positions (all high level IT positions are exempt already) don't really have much leverage for negotiation on an individual basis. Low level positions are on the wrong side of the many-to-one ratio with there many employees/applicants and only one employer. One-to-one, all else being equal, you have equivalent leverage. The minute there are two positions the employers leverage doubles while the employees/applicants leverage stays the same.
Unions help to restore the balance by consolidating the employees in order to bring it back to one-to-one.
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
But they're not exempt if their pay rate is below a certain threshold, among other conditions. The standards for exempt status in California are more stringent under California law than under federal law, meaning it's more likely that an IT worker qualifies for overtime pay. In California, currently, the hourly pay rate threshold is $37.74 per hour; any work performed over eight hours in a day or forty in a week is eligible for overtime pay. Salaries are calculated as hourly pay, assuming eight hour days and forty hour weeks.
At my workplace, we work 12 hour shifts; this is important. I found out from a co-worker that we were actually entitled to overtime pay; he'd had to explain this to our employer. I discovered our employer was playing dumb, as they claimed not to know anything about this when I brought up the issue, although they conceded the point and paid me my back pay shortly after I was able to cite California labor law, from the same link that That_Dan_Guy posted.
Fortunately, for workers in California, the more stringent standards for exempt status at the state level override the standards at the federal level.
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?
This is the result of Senate rules. As Senate Majority Leader, Reid has to vote against a bill that is going to fail if he wants to reserve the right to bring it back one day for another vote. He has to constantly vote against bills that he supports.
"The word bipartisan means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out." -- George Carlin
I understand your problem. Now, will you show me on the doll where the government touched you?
Right here, on my left front pocket.
Yes, right there, in my wallet.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Yep. That whole thing about "network" is what will screw the cable workers. Most systems now use a DNCS, or Digital Network Control System, about half of which are provided by Cisco acquisition Scientific Atlanta.
At the heart of the headend is a big Solaris machine that handles provisioning for all of the cable boxes and acts like a supervisor blade in a large router. From there, the individual set-top boxes are addressed via IP on a hybrid fiber-coax network, making nearly every cable TV system in the United States a large network.
Headend engineers are already pretty much IT people, but the line techs have clung to their non-exempt blue collar status for years and it costs the cable companies out the wazoo. They've tried to enforce no-overtime policies, but their customer service rates and rate at which they can install new customers plummets.
This isn't the first time the industry has gone out of it's way to screw line techs either. About 8 years ago, Time Warner, Adelphia, Cox, and Comcast all, right around the same time, put policies in place to prevent workers over a certain weight from being certified to climb poles or operate in bucket trucks. The restrictions were based only on weight, not accounting for height, build, or experience, so tall muscular guys were being pulled off of poles that short fat guys were allowed to climb. The effect of this was that fewer and fewer line techs were allowed to do the work that paid a premium and were stuck in jobs like customer premise installation which had some very strict hour restrictions. Again, voila, less overtime.
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.