The times when you had to spread your asscheeks and take it up yours just to even HAVE a job should be over.
Historically speaking, there's only one way the working class gets a fair shake - a drastic reduction in the available labor force. This was the case after the black plague and WWII, and the sub-rich flourished, because they realized that they were no longer easily replaceable.
I think it's a legal thing - if you give health insurance benefits to any of your full time people, you have to offer it to all of them. Plus, anyone that works more than a certain number of hours is full time. And most people can't live on part time only work.
You'd have to try to get the truth out of the companies themselves, though.
I think that when we think about 1.5 times the pay, then it sounds more expensive than another employee, but aren't there problems there? Why aren't more companies doing this?
Like I said, health insurance is getting absurdly expensive. While you might have savings in pay rate from hiring another worker, that's one more person on the health plan, and that can dwarf any overtime savings.
Plus, companies can get around paying overtime (or even paying for extra hours at all) by using this salaried nonsense on employees and requiring them to work 60+ hours.
Of course, I don't necessarily think that 1.5x pay rates for overtime is a magic number or anything. You could increase it to 2x pay rate for over 50 hours, 2.5x pay rate for over 60, etc, or any number of other schemes.
Usually when we're talking about the oppressed worker, we're not talking about a one-employee shop. A lot of small businesses are exempt from many labor laws until they employ a certain number of people. But even with just one employee, it's still cheaper to hire a second guy part-time than to pay the overtime on the first.
Thanks for commenting on the benefits. Unfortunately, that's part of the free market, I guess.
Not quite, and this is unfortunately the fault of FDR. During the war he was worried about inflation, and enacted price controls so that companies couldn't increase their wages. Problem is, politics (and economics) is like water on cement - it finds every crack and crevice.
The caps on salaries did not apply to other benefits, such as health insurance. So companies gave those incentives to make their job offers more attractive, in lieu of extra money. Enough companies did this that health insurance benefits through employment got tax breaks, and we've been stuck with that situation ever since.
Health insurance doesn't really make sense anyway - you have it in case you get sick - which is almost assured to happen anyway. Plus, it pays for regular checkups. It would make more sense to simply save your money and pay for the doctor yourself.
Except health insurance has inflated the cost of health care to the point where the average person simply can't pay for a lot of things out of pocket.
So unfortunately we've been paying for that one mistake for a long time. I don't think health insurance as we know it will be around much longer anyway, since companies really don't have to try so hard to get most of their employees.
Time and a half, is only 1.5 employees, and thus is cheaper than 2 employees. So, that's not painful enough. The pain of the punishment has to be more painful than the hiring of more employees.
Um, I'm not quite sure what you're saying.
Take an example. You have three employees who make $10/hr, and work them sixty hours a week each. that's 180 hours, and $1200 for the first 40 hours (total of all three employees), and 900 for the extra 20 hours (again, total for all three employees). $2100 total.
Suppose you hired an extra worker, and could reduce the amount of overtime worked by 40 hours. That makes $1600 for the first 40 hours, and $300 for the overtime (20 hours total). $1900.
You've just saved $200 a week by hiring an extra person. This was the original idea behind overtime.
This is, of course, ignoring benefits and some other costs (administrative, etc).
Regarding benefits, maybe they need to change the benefits laws. Maybe the laws should require benefits for everybody, based on the number of hours worked.
By far the largest benefit cost is health insurance, which is only going to go up. It's prompted some companies to drop their employee health insurance entirely, and many to hire a much larger number of part time employees.
The only way to require these benefits for everybody is national health care.
Another idea is to make over time painful, so that even at minimum wage levels, their is no incentive to keep servants and slaves working overtime.
That was the idea by making it time-and-a-half. I mean, at that point it makes more sense to just hire an extra person if you're working your employees extra hours regularly, right?
Except it doesn't take into account benefits, which can be very expensive. And, of course, exempt status.
I'm all for public transportation - and I'm all for increased tax of carbon emissions. I only suggest you actually "provide" the public transport before enacting this.
And it has to be adequate. My city has a decent public transport system, but only for downtown. I checked to see how long it would take me to get to work through our bus/train system. The time I'd be on the road to/from work per day would go from 1 hour a day to 3 hours per day.
This is why it is used mostly by the poor - the value of their time (in terms of pay) is worth less, so they can trade it more readily for saved money.
The reality, though, is that there are many... many... people in this country who do not work, who often have never worked, and when given the chance by charity and government groups do not show any serious interest in working.
I'm relatively young (20s), single, and relatively healthy, and I can't find any insurance that'll even quote a price near that (the actual price always seems to jump about 25% up from their quote), or with a deductible nearly that low. Where are you getting your insurance?
We wouldnt have this problem of people not being able to pay for most health care related services to begin with if it werent for the fact that we have removed the efficiencies that should exist in a market based economy. If we simply did away with all of the things that cause prices to be artificially inflated like insurance (whether government or private) people would be far better off in the long run.
Why hire fresh and spend money training them when there are other companies willing to do that for you?
This line of thinking is exactly why there won't be nearly as many people getting experience as those other companies need. That's why entry level jobs pay a pittance and experienced people can make companies pay through the nose.
Was I offered a job? yes, I told them that they never took the time to give me due respect when I was there, buggered if I was going to bend over backwards for them now!
Wrong move. You should have demanded a pretty large compensation package, but not so high that they'd simply laugh.
They need something you can provide - make them pay dearly for it.
This of course ignores the fact that if most companies do this, in 5+ years there won't be a new supply of these people, since nobody hires those "young uns" for IT work.
No, I'm talking about the traditional kind of pension that pays you a fixed amount per month after you retire. The workers thought that since the company would likely be around forever they could count on it. They didn't realize that companies could intentionally go bankrupt and transfer their assets to "another" company and welch on their agreements.
This is exactly why I'm not an organ donor. Not because I particularly care what happens to my organs after my death, but because I want to increase my chances of surviving. I don't want any part of my surgeon's mind thinking "There's a kid in Kansas that could really use this liver."
I'm sorry, you're seriously contesting that the employees have a right to simply ask for more?
Hate to break it to you, but they also have the right to quit their jobs! Horrors!
As an aside, this was not always the case - employers would include in the employment contract that the employee did not have the right to quit the job - termination was at the discretion of the employer only.
In 1958 most everyone could count on working for a big megacorp throughout their career and retire with a big fat pension to carry them through their golden years.
They couldn't actually count on this - they only thought they could.
Guess they didn't forsee corporations doing everything they could to welch on their agreements.
Maybe this hasn't occurred to you...We don't give a damn about the company because the company doesn't give a damn about us.
Someone in another post said that we should be thinking about the long-term well being of the company. There seems to be little point in that because most companies will drop their employees for nearly any reason - maybe the new boss just doesn't like you and is looking for a reason to get rid of you. Maybe the stock price went down and a division or two is going to be cut to bolster it.
In that kind of scenario, it doesn't make sense to care about what is good for the company.
Preventing you from getting in before the ID is shown. That's where they have the power - they can't force you to show ID before allowing you to LEAVE.
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I think it's a legal thing - if you give health insurance benefits to any of your full time people, you have to offer it to all of them. Plus, anyone that works more than a certain number of hours is full time. And most people can't live on part time only work.
You'd have to try to get the truth out of the companies themselves, though.
Plus, companies can get around paying overtime (or even paying for extra hours at all) by using this salaried nonsense on employees and requiring them to work 60+ hours.
Of course, I don't necessarily think that 1.5x pay rates for overtime is a magic number or anything. You could increase it to 2x pay rate for over 50 hours, 2.5x pay rate for over 60, etc, or any number of other schemes.
The caps on salaries did not apply to other benefits, such as health insurance. So companies gave those incentives to make their job offers more attractive, in lieu of extra money. Enough companies did this that health insurance benefits through employment got tax breaks, and we've been stuck with that situation ever since.
Health insurance doesn't really make sense anyway - you have it in case you get sick - which is almost assured to happen anyway. Plus, it pays for regular checkups. It would make more sense to simply save your money and pay for the doctor yourself.
Except health insurance has inflated the cost of health care to the point where the average person simply can't pay for a lot of things out of pocket.
So unfortunately we've been paying for that one mistake for a long time. I don't think health insurance as we know it will be around much longer anyway, since companies really don't have to try so hard to get most of their employees.
Take an example. You have three employees who make $10/hr, and work them sixty hours a week each. that's 180 hours, and $1200 for the first 40 hours (total of all three employees), and 900 for the extra 20 hours (again, total for all three employees). $2100 total.
Suppose you hired an extra worker, and could reduce the amount of overtime worked by 40 hours. That makes $1600 for the first 40 hours, and $300 for the overtime (20 hours total). $1900.
You've just saved $200 a week by hiring an extra person. This was the original idea behind overtime.
This is, of course, ignoring benefits and some other costs (administrative, etc). By far the largest benefit cost is health insurance, which is only going to go up. It's prompted some companies to drop their employee health insurance entirely, and many to hire a much larger number of part time employees.
The only way to require these benefits for everybody is national health care.
Except it doesn't take into account benefits, which can be very expensive. And, of course, exempt status.
Don't forget the company store! (ie, Walmart)
This is why it is used mostly by the poor - the value of their time (in terms of pay) is worth less, so they can trade it more readily for saved money.
I'm relatively young (20s), single, and relatively healthy, and I can't find any insurance that'll even quote a price near that (the actual price always seems to jump about 25% up from their quote), or with a deductible nearly that low. Where are you getting your insurance?
They need something you can provide - make them pay dearly for it.
This of course ignores the fact that if most companies do this, in 5+ years there won't be a new supply of these people, since nobody hires those "young uns" for IT work.
No, I'm talking about the traditional kind of pension that pays you a fixed amount per month after you retire. The workers thought that since the company would likely be around forever they could count on it. They didn't realize that companies could intentionally go bankrupt and transfer their assets to "another" company and welch on their agreements.
This is exactly why I'm not an organ donor. Not because I particularly care what happens to my organs after my death, but because I want to increase my chances of surviving. I don't want any part of my surgeon's mind thinking "There's a kid in Kansas that could really use this liver."
Nobody gives anybody anything worth having in this life. You get it by taking it.
I'm sorry, you're seriously contesting that the employees have a right to simply ask for more?
Hate to break it to you, but they also have the right to quit their jobs! Horrors!
As an aside, this was not always the case - employers would include in the employment contract that the employee did not have the right to quit the job - termination was at the discretion of the employer only.
Guess they didn't forsee corporations doing everything they could to welch on their agreements.
In that kind of scenario, it doesn't make sense to care about what is good for the company.
Preventing you from getting in before the ID is shown. That's where they have the power - they can't force you to show ID before allowing you to LEAVE.