Your Pay Is About To Go Up (gawker.com)

The Department of Labor's overtime rule is expected to be updated some time later this summer, and when it does, you will soon be entitled to overtime pay if you make less than $50,000 per year. According to Gawker, "It now appears that even if you are a salaried employee or some sort of 'manager,' you will still be entitled to time-and-a-half pay for working more than 40 hours per week, as long as your total salary falls under the threshold." How did they come to this conclusion? Gawker points out that the Department of Labor promotes a Wall Street Journal story which says that "The threshold would be increased to $970, or $50,440 annually. That level is about the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for salaried workers." Hamilton Nolan writes, "This rule has been a matter of political contention for years. But now that it is actually approaching, its import is becoming clear: overtime pay, which has long been isolated to a minority of workers, is about to be extended to almost the entire middle class."

Comments

Whose pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't everyone here a tech worker? Does anyone here actually make under 50k?

Re:Whose pay?

[NiteMair]

right afterwards got hired at a new job that pays closer to $78k a year. I'll be doing basically the same work at the new job.

Each time I've been laid off (twice in my career), I've landed a better job getting paid more money...

So being laid off isn't always a terrible thing - sometimes it's really just the spark that ignites the job hunt for a better paying job. I know the first time it happened my salary pretty much tripled with the next job - which suggests that the company I had been with for 5 years had been taking advantage of my accumulated skills and entry-level pay.

In my case, I ended up doing software development for different industries each time, which also gave me an opportunity to learn something new.

Re: Whose pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not, but it's my passion.

Re:Whose pay?

[Pseudonym]

Isn't everyone here a tech worker? Does anyone here actually make under 50k?

And not everyone here lives in the US, you insensitive clod.

Re:Whose pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've one been laid off twice?

Hell, I get laid off every 2 to 3 years and every time I end up with a new job paying 30% to 40% more. Now when the boss tells me there has to be layoffs, I smile and ask if I am getting two weeks plus a severance package, or are they just going to hand me a box.

The last boss to do it laid off the whole team (With a two week notice). When we were leaving, he asked why everyone was smiling.

I looked right at him and said,

1) Your idea of outsourcing all the L3/L4 people to India is doomed to failure,
2) Every one of us is stepping out of this place and into a new job making 30% to 50% more, We all start at our new jobs tomorrow,
and 3) We never have to deal with your stupid ideas again.

So everyone is happy!

It was funny when 6 months later they had to bring the jobs back, had trouble finding people to fill the positions, and started calling the old team to try to get them back. Guess that is what happens when you outsource a GOVERNMENT "NO OUTSOURCE" CONTRACT!

Re:Whose pay?

[rastos1]

Bah! I get laid every 2 or 3 years too!

Re:Whose pay?

[Salgak1]

I was working one particular Fed contract, which, after several appeals by the current prime, was finally awarded to the competitor.

Who promptly announced that everyone could keep their jobs. . . at 20% less. Contract handover was two months later.

My shop had a total of 34 contractors. Inside of a week, we were down to 9 of us, and I left the next week (12% raise). I'm told the last guy left 2 weeks later, one month out from handover.

And the new prime had exactly ZERO acceptance from current contract staff. New prime was reportedly going crazy, because NOBODY would accept a pay cut.

They called a meeting of all the previous contractors. Nobody showed. They called another, with the bait of a free $50. Amazon card for attending. . . .they then offered a 5% cut instead. We started walking (not that I was going to accept anyway). . . .they offered par. We kept walking.

Eventually, they offered +10% and signing bonuses, but pretty much everybody was settled in elsewhere. They ended up having to bring the old prime on as a sub, to get it manned. . .

I Dunno About "Entire Middle Class"

[Anonymous Coward]

Around where I live, $50K, including said overtime, is damn near poverty.

Re: I Dunno About "Entire Middle Class"

[LostMyBeaver]

$1700 a month child support!?!?!?! Holy shit!!! I pay that much per child and then also have to spend time with them and raise them and stuff too. That sounds like a fucking great deal. I'm calling my wife and asking for a divorce and making her take the kids.

Me and the two brats are taking a trip (just the three of us) from Norway to Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, to London and back this summer... just the business class tickets and hotels in Tokyo and London have cost me about $14,000 so far. By the time I pay for the beach house in New York, the rental car, food, taxis, etc... I expect to be well over $20,000. That's $10,000 per kid burned in 2 weeks just to give them a nice summer vacation. And worst of all.. they'll probably want me to spend time with them and talk with them and bring them all over to see stuff. So... add the pain and suffering on top of the financial cost.

Dude... you've got a sweet deal. I've been threatening them for years to dress them in paper bags and duct tape... then to "stuff me", I came home and found them both sitting around dressed in paper bags and bunny rabbit print duct tape... smiling!!! BRATS!!!

No, that means your pay is about to go down

[SuperKendall]

If the pay for overtime is going to go up, that means it's less likely that a business will want you to work overtime.

But they may not be able to quite get everything done they need to, so they will hire a part time worker...

But then that's too many extra hours, so that means your full time to overtime job gets cut back to a half-time position also. Now they have two people working 60 hours instead of one person working 50, with no overtime.

Re:No, that means your pay is about to go down

[Wycliffe]

If the pay for overtime is going to go up, that means it's less likely that a business will want you to work overtime.

That's kindof the point. The point of overtime law is to discourage companies from forcing people to work more than 40 hours per week. So I actually disagree with the headline. Likely people's pay is not going to go up significantly but rather many companies will hire more people to fill the gap. As a side benefit this should help unemployment. I work at a tech company and we pay everyone hourly. I think salaried is stupid and we should just do away with it. If they track your hours then you should automatically be hourly. If you don't set your own schedule then you should be hourly. If you can't leave at noon because things are slow then you should be hourly. If you don't have a set amount of tasks that once finished you can leave then you should be hourly. Most people shouldn't really be salaried. Nurses or anyone who has to be at their station a minimum number of hours shouldn't be salaried. Salaried should be reserved for the accountant that comes in, balances the books, and leaves or other such jobs where you can actually run out of work and go home early if you get done early.

Re:No, that means your pay is about to go down

[fermion]

I know young store managers that are on salary around $25K. The hours they work for that money means they make little more than minimum wage. Some of them are trying to go to school. For them the benifit is going to be working few hours for the money. They may be cut back to $10 an hour, which means they will have $15 overtime, which means they may have to work 45 hours a week to make the same money instead of 50 like they do now.

Or they may just suck it up and pay managers $50K, since keeping up with hours for managerial staff is kind of cumbersome.

Where this is going to be a stickler is actually some government jobs. For instance some places do not pay teachers $50K yet they are exempt employees. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Re:Money is for LUDDITES.

[Aighearach]

App guy, look up "fiat currency." All you did is trade money for money. You should write a new app, App Money! You can app it wherever apps app, right?

Divide et impera

[Trachman]

Take arbitrarily selected number, 40%.

Those above it: shove it

Those below it: take it

Reality is that most of unpaid overtime is done by faceless, nameless IT workers, project managers, accountants, office workers with the salary band of $50K to $100K.

Re:Great, drive prices up some more

[crunchygranola]

Get ready for things to get more expensive. You didn't actually think companies were going to give that money away freely, did you? People will lose jobs, too, because businesses won't be able to afford this.

Because, you know, without any sort of employment regulation we always get the best of all possible worlds with absolutely the best economy and wages that there is possible to be. Because right wing ideology says so!

It's the same reasons economists agree that minimum wage hurts the economy.

Economists "agree" on no such thing.

Re:This Is Why I Work for Lots of People

[Radical Moderate]

"There's no way for the government to set employee / employer agreements in such a way that everyone benefits. "

"Everyone" isn't supposed to benefit. The low-wage workers who were getting screwed out of their wages benefit. The employers who were screwing them lose. Not everything has be win-win to be worth doing.