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The Overtime Buck Stops Here
Ant (and others) sent in a link to this Salon story that talks about grueling overtime hours in Silicon Valley and how the traditional tech-haus 80 hour work week may conflict with assorted labor laws, especially a new bill that made its way through the California Legislature late last week. A more recent Wired piece claims California Governor Grey Davis is expected to sign the legislation into law later this week, and has a link to the full text of the bill. Will this mean fewer high-tech start-ups in California and more in places like Virginia, where there are hardly any labor laws? Or will Silicon Valley people take life a little easier now, and take a few hours each week to spend some of the money they're making? Or will labor lawyers make all the money? Hard to tell.
I have to admit to being slightly amused at the idea of laws changing the workplace much, 'specially in "new media" et. al. I work in Germany, where the labor laws make things in America look downright sweatshoppish...yet it's also quite normal for people in new media to work ungodly hours and get no overtime pay (the Voice of Experience(TM)).
The point is that the law is very near totally ineffective until someone actually decides to complain, thus pretty much ensuring that the job will go bye-bye (or thus creating a rather hostile working atmosphere), regardless of the legal restrictions. So no one says anything, which in effect implies consent. In a small shop--which most new media places are, i.e. less than 30 people total--there is almost no chance of anyone sticking out their necks.
This is why I got fed up and decided to go indie. At least I have a better chance of setting my own hours...and get PAID for the time I put in. Amazing how much more fun it is.
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I work in New Jersey, just outside Manhattan. (In fact, I can see the Lincoln Tunnel from one of the windows in the building.) I'm a contractor. As the result of Federal law, I don't GET overtime pay.
That's right. Instead of overtime, I get straight time. So, the fact I came in this weekend and worked for six hours on Saturday means I get 46 hours at straight time. No OT pay. No time-and-a-half. None of it.
If you look at that article, it mentions the federal laws that deal with overtime. Those are the ones that gut you. I make $35,000 before taxes. That exceeds the cap for contract workers, and makes your employer exempt from having to pay you for overtime.
We don't need to change the California laws, we need to change the FEDERAL laws.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
For the reasons you mentioned, most engineers or software developers will not be subject to these overtime laws. These positions are are probably salaried and I would hope pay more than 2x minimum wage. This law is primarly aimed at hourly workers.
Remember, this is something that is not new. CA had a similar law just a couple years ago that was replaced with a more standard overtime definition (ie. anything over 40 is 1.5x the pay rate). It wasn't just anything over 8 hours a day either. If you worked for 6 days or more straight, anything over 30 hours for the entire week was overtime as long as one didn't work more than a certain amount in any one given day. This was just for hourly workers. However, CA is beginning to put a 40 hour restriction on salaried workers in some industries such as retail operations.
The other states that have similar but, not as strict laws are Nevada, Alaska, and Colorado. NV and AK start calculating OT after 8 hours and CO starts calculating it after 12 hrs for a single day. While I don't live in California, this irks me because I maintain the payroll software my company uses. Before we opened a CA location, I had to rework all the software to take advantage of this. Then the law as repealed, so my changes weren't needed. Now it looks like I'll have to fold those changes back in with the Y2K version. Thank you Dale R. Worley for the emerge functions in emacs!
The other wierd things about CA: If a person quits or is fired, they have to be paid on the spot what they are owed for the current payroll period including any vacation time. Also, the paycheck has to be drawn from an account in CA bank. I guess payback to the CA bankers lobby.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Yeah, they can be a pain. But it all comes down to money, in the end. Fortunately, some things that save the company money also save you hassles.
Overtime pay is time and a half. If you ARE regularly working 80-hour weeks, it's probably likely to be more cost-effective to hire another person and let both of you work 40 hours. Either that or you're underpaid to begin with.
Besides the expense of paying for overtime, there's also the issue of increased time on the job = increased fatigue = increased likelihood of injuries. True, this was developed for hard-labor jobs, but does anyone here REALLY want carpal tunnel syndrome?
Injuries mean workers' comp claims, health insurance costs going up, loss of time from employees -- and eventually, a company that nobody wants to work for.
It is kind of sad that good business practice actually has to be regulated
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today