Who Owns Your Overtime?

HughPickens.com writes: Fran Sussner Rodgers writes in the NY Times that a little-noticed change in the American workplace is about to occur. Later this month the Department of Labor is expected to announce an adjustment to the Fair Labor Standards Act raising the salary threshold for overtime from $23,660 per year to at least double that threshold. In 1975, the last year the threshold was significantly raised, 60 percent of salaried workers fell within the requirement for overtime pay while today, only 8 percent do. The new requirement should be a welcome change for millions of American workers.

But the change also speaks to an issue that affects everyone, whether eligible for overtime or not — the clash between the finite amount of time employees actually have versus the desire of employers to treat time as an inexhaustible resource. Employees in the United States currently work more hours than workers in any of the world's 10 largest economies except Russia. When everything over 40 hours is free to the employer, the temptation to demand more is almost irresistible. But for most employees, the ones exempt from overtime rules, their managers have little incentive to look for ways to use their time more efficiently. "We are a tired, stressed and overworked nation, which has many negative consequences for our personal health and the care of our children. As a nation, we work harder and longer than almost all of our competitors, and much of that work is uncompensated," writes Rodgers. "Time is our personal currency. We parcel it out, hour by hour, to meet the demands placed on us. We all pay a steep price, as individuals and as a nation, when we can't meet our most important obligations."

Comments

Salaries should be limited

[Anonymous Coward]

They have incentive to work you longer than the 40 hours a week a salary is calculated based on (FTE): the more hours you work the cheaper your labor rate is.

Re:Salaries should be limited

[aaarrrgggh]

No it isn't; you don't get anything more done, unless it is for one (maybe two) weeks out of 8-12 weeks, and even then it is limited to about a 15-20% increase for those weeks.

Speaking as an employer who needs to get an "honest week's work" consistently out of my employees, I discourage overtime. There are a few exceptions (deadlines must be met, sometimes people have to chip in more to cover for others on vacation our overloaded, etc.), and we pay straight hourly wages for salaried employees earning less than $80k. The big exception is entry level engineers, who generally need to put in more than 40 hours per week in order to cover both trip aiming and "working" time.

The alternative is hiring and firing, which doesn't really work for either side.

If we are forced to pay time-and-a-half overtime for an entry level engineer (more importantly is the idea of them being non-exempt-- which means they need to have scheduled breaks and lunch), we will never hire an engineer without appropriate experience in our field again. Young professionals being treated like factory, retail, or unskilled labor destroys a professional work ethic. Professionals manage their own time, take breaks when they need to, finish their work, and don't use a time clock.

Re:Salaries should be limited

[Frobnicator]

Professionals manage their own time, take breaks when they need to, finish their work, and don't use a time clock.

While it would be nice if this were true, many companies leverage the attitude in order to add unofficial overtime.

They are not demanding you work 50 or 60 hours. Instead the boss demands that workers finish a feature by a specific date. In order to meet that date the extra time must be submitted.

Usually that can be avoided by good interviewing and identifying those companies. I've had one job that had that mentality, and it lasted about six months (when the next job was lined up.)

If the workers are putting in unpaid overtime that is a symptom both of managers who abuse their workers, and workers who don't value their time. If the workers started to value their time they'd demand change within the organization and leave en mass if it didn't change. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they don't. Fear, fear of security, fear of unemployment, fear of change, fear of whatever, something is messing it up.

While a union is a terrible fit for computer programmers due to the wide variety of work skills, it is something that comes up in discussions every few years. If tech workers and programmers as a collective demanded the change, it could happen quickly.

TL;DR: Until a critical mass of workers demand better work conditions, bad businesses won't change. Good businesses already treat people with respect.

Re:*I* own my overtime

[Sowelu]

Not gonna argue tooooo much, but remember that the pool of good jobs is a lot smaller than the pool of people who want them. Slackers and people who don't advance their own skills won't get too far, but if everyone did their damnedest, a lot of people would still get stuck with the jobs nobody wants.

Save Money and Just say no

[Anonymous Coward]

Save money, as much as you can. Then tell your employers NO. No pager, no cell phone, no email, no overtime, no working late. Leave that as the legacy to your kids. The MBAs want to leave the piles of money they steal for other workers as their legacy to their kids. Don't leave your kids workplaces of fear and intimidation. Show these companies that they don't own you.

Re:Save Money and Just say no

[thinkwaitfast]

I showed companies that they don't own me by incorporating myself and becoming an independent contract laborer. Choosing not to live in the 'luxury' of the money I was making (and it was substantial). With the money I saved I retired before my 40th birthday.

Re:Save Money and Just say no

[Harlequin80]

Without being american or knowing that piece of legislation I think I can take an educated guess. This will probably be legislation that says even if you are incorporated if you a trading your time for money with the same company you will still be treated as an employee for the purposes of tax an other legislation.

The equivilent in the UK would be the IR35 rules.

You get around this by having more than one client / changing employers on a regular basis or selling items to do with the business.

These pieces of legislation exist for two main reasons. The first is to protect the tax base. The second is to prevent companies from forcing their employees to incorporate to avoid employment law provisions.

Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[rmdingler]

If I pay a worker $23,660 (€21,170), that works out to about $455 per week.

If I call that a salary then it is a guaranteed weekly wage, but I can work that employee 60 (or 70 or 80) hours a week with no extra pay.

Fock me...There is no chance a system like that would be abused.

Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[TheGratefulNet]

its worse yet. the employer's abuse of employees includes not hiring 'full time', but only hiring you as a 'contractor'. my last gig was as a contractor; unwilling, as I refer to it, since I really wanted to have benefits.

see, in the US (for those not from here) if we call you a 'contractor' in the software field, then we can have you work 40 hours/week minimum, likely ask for more and not pay more (just guilting you into working more, the unspoken threat is to cancel your contract the very next day). but the super sweet deal they get is that they don't cover your healthcare (not one penny), they don't cover the national holidays, the religious holidays or even your actual sick days. all that costs you a day's pay for each day you take off during those times. we have a lot of US monday holidays and, as a contractor, I hated it. I got 32 hours of pay that week, other fulltime employees got their full week's pay and 1 day loss of pay is actually a lot, when you add it up. and no, as a contractor, you do NOT get paid more than the f/t guys. that stopped happening 10 or 20 years ago, at least. today, the contractor in sw is the lowest rank, the most disposable and everyone knows it.

oh, and we were told to take our laptops home with us each nite. sometimes we would have to call in to a conf call at 7am or 8am and while its nice to be able to do that from home, it still was extra hours work and even taking company property home feels wrong to me, if I'm not 'part of them' and not a full employee. in fact, if the laptop gets lost/stolen/broken, I may very well be liable for it.

contracting sucks. don't let anyone tell you its good or fun. you take it because its all that's offered, not because you want it.

Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[labnet]

Wow, sounds like a sucky culture in the USA.
I employ >50 (Australia: including >10 engineers) and I don't expect anyone to work more than 40 hours.
Sure, I could be richer if I flogged my salaried staff, but life is more than about work.

Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Part of being a contractor is the actual contract you make with your employer.
Have the contract clearly deal with overtime an such.

Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[dcollins117]

As a contractor, you get higher pay which more than compensates the additional taxes you need to pay and your health care costs. Unless you are stupid. I'll put it mildly, contracting is not for you..

Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously

[ScentCone]

contracting sucks. don't let anyone tell you its good or fun. you take it because its all that's offered, not because you want it

You're doing it wrong.

If you feel pinched by the fact that a sick day or a holiday isn't a billable day, then you have made some very poor choices about what you're selling, and how much you're charging for it. Why should anyone take advice from some one who hasn't done a little basic math before signing a contract?

I Do

[Greyfox]

Leaning toward contract work, if I work an hour I get paid an hour. And it shows, with the production teams constantly being asked to come in and work weekends while I'm off skydiving. Of course, if I don't work an hour I don't get paid an hour, either. Which means if it's a particularly nice Friday I might just forgo the $600 and go skydiving anyway. It IS easy to get into a cycle of not taking real vacations as a contractor. Every so often you really DO need to get out of town, even if it's just for a long weekend.

Every once in a while some manager will try to discreetly broach the subject of fudging the books so I work longer one week, take some time off the next week and smooth it all out. To which I usually respond, loudly, with a beautifully crafted note of surprise in my voice, "You want me to FALSIFY MY TIMECARD?" They usually quickly deny it and scurry off to harass the salaried employees some more.

I'm quite wary of offers to come onboard as a FTE, as that usually means the company has a lot of overtime in the cards in the next two or three months, and a layoff cycle coming right after that. Fortunately their offers are usually so laughably bad that they're pretty easy to resist.

Re:We've only got ourselves to blame

[RyoShin]

the average American employee's mentality is to just accept and give in to whatever employers do to you without any questions or push back at all

Americans, for the most part, have bought into the "American Dream". Whatever it was before, the American Dream is now:

If you work hard now, completely on your own, you will be extremely successful later.

It's not might, it's not could, it's will. Despite the fact that anyone can look around them and see it's not true, they've bought into this idea that working long hours, for free, will rocket them up the chain into power and money, and then they can work short weeks and command others to work long weeks. It's the same reason that ~50% of America keeps voting for Republicans who promise tax cuts (for the rich) and end to subsidies (for the poor), even when those same voters don't benefit from the tax cuts and would be hurt by loss of those subsidies.

And, on top of that, the promises pit those voter against themselves: if you don't do your expected 80hrs/week, the other guy might, and then he'll become rich and powerful. And who will you have to blame if that happens? That's right, no one but yourself.

We have this weird lust for capitalism, making excuses when it beats us down. "Oh, that's out of love. Capitalism knows we need to hurt in order to get better." The outcome of this is profits > people, even when someone who seriously spouts such nonsense is harmed by the very policies. Because, in the end, we're told that we're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and we're willing to hurt ourselves in the present if we can benefit from those same policies in the future.

I think that America has immense potential, but at the moment the majority of us are stupid crazy.

Re:Efficiency

[presidenteloco]

And they probably produce these miracle outputs in intense 3 or 4 hour bursts followed by paid sit-on-your-ass mental exhaustion.

Not uncompensated

[MrL0G1C]

As a nation, we work harder and longer than almost all of our competitors, and much of that work is uncompensated

Oh, it's compensated all right, it's just not the poor bastard doing the overtime that's getting the dough, it's the directors and the shareholders.

If you work for free, that's called slavery and you're a mug. And American holidays are a joke. And the American health care system is a joke and the internet competition is a joke. Brainwashed.

Re:*I* own my overtime

[Immerman]

2) News flash, most industries have competition "across the street", yet they still manage to train their employees. The trick is to ALSO pay them a decent wage. If it's worth it for the competition to hire them out from under you, then you're under-paying them. Training isn't a form of compensation, it's a capital investment that also incurs maintenance expenses.

The job market is a big place, and there's probably only a handful of jobs that demand all the skills you require. Why should I spend MY precious time training for your job, when that job will filled long before my training is complete?

Why such short employment

[Immerman]

Perhaps we should ask why the average employment length is so short? I really doubt it's because the employee's skills are no longer needed, and it's probably not because the employee thinks a different work environment will be substantially more pleasant.

I suspect the usual culprit is an industry culture that doesn't give regular raises to employees to ensure that they remain appropriately compensated. If the only way I can get paid what I'm worth is to get a job at a different company, then what do realistically expect me to do?

Re:Why such short employment

[Stuarticus]

Productive and innovative? In my experience the type of butterfly who "pops in and sorts everything out then moves on" is usually the type who leave a pile of half finished crap in their wake.

Re:Efficiency

[Bert64]

Very true, but employers are often greedy and treat their employees like robots...
Most people's optimal concentration span is relatively short, so anything that isn't ridiculously mundane can only be done efficiently for a few hours and regular breaks are needed... Even mundane work that doesn't require much thought will suffer from longer hours, as people will get tired and make more mistakes.
And ofcourse overworked, unhappy resentful employees won't expend any more than minimum effort.

I've seen many employers institute highly unpopular policies in an aim to increase output, only for it to have the opposite effect. Ofcourse then they blame the staff and never even consider that their own policies were the cause.