“A bill recently introduced in Congress would greatly expand the exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act for IT employees, ending overtime benefits for many more types of workers, including network, database and security specialists.” The Democrat senator of North-Carolina has introduced an even worse version of the bill, which specifically exempts database and network specialists and security professionals from overtime benefits. Say, isn’t some company building a huge data centre in North-Carolina? I’m sure it’s all a coincidence.
Sure, my local Union decided to ban overtime for support workers (IT is listed under that category; we have unofficial understanding with mangement that anyone working overtime gets 1.5x hours off the following day), but at least it’s not banned at the provincial or federal levels.
I can see this leading to situations where noone accepts a pay raise that takes them over $27.63/hr.
What a stupid thing to do during a recession.
Catch up with the rest of the world. It’s fortunate being paid overtime in most industries.
That’s not catching up with the rest of the world; That’s taking a step backwards.
It’s generally considered progress when a society decides to reduce the opportunities where those with power can take unfair advantage of those he employs, on a whim, simply because the people on the bottom simply have no other choice but to submit.
I don’t get why ANYONE would be denied over time. You work more then 40 hours, you should be paid for the time you work. Maybe not 1.5x, but you should at least get your regular pay. No pay? No work! I just don’t get it.
Kay Hagan is what is know in the political world as a “Blue Dog” or in other words, a democrat in name only, she votes conservative in almost everything and is in a heavily conservative state.
Back in the old days they’d have been called “Dixiecrats” during the civil rights era in the US and would have been on the pro-segregation side.
If you can’t win as a Republican or a Libertarian run as a Democrat and do everything you can to discredit any real dems, it’s OK, most ‘merican’s are too politically stupid to tell whats up and the mainstream media has already been paid off and/or lobotomized so as to never challenge you.
No overtime, no working outside of hours. I’m not sure where the problem is?
Vanders,
“No overtime, no working outside of hours. I’m not sure where the problem is?”
Well, in some cases you’ll be found unsuitable for the job then. Alot of people in IT are genuinely needed for after hours work. It makes the most sense to deploy new software or make changes in the evenings or on weekends when it has the least potential for causing problems for users. I’ve been there, and the last thing you want to do is cause an outage for a thousand business users.
I for one don’t object to after hours work, it makes me more appealing to the employer too, but it really sucks to not be paid for it.
In a healthy economy, increased responsibilities should go hand in hand with increased pay, but in this enemic economy, many of us are competing over jobs that pay peanuts for base pay, no retirement, no overtime, etc. We’re just “happy” not to be laid off.
I’ve been there for years and I’m there right now. But if and when I do out of hours, I either a) Get paid for it or b) Trade the hours (Time Off In Lieu). I do, sometimes, do more than my 37.5 hours that I’m contracted for: just this August I was pulling 60+ hours, with 14 hour days. The difference is, it wasn’t expected of me, and I was offered TOIL for the extra effort.
Like I said, 8 hours pay for 8 hours work.
Vanders,
Many employers won’t give you that choice since they don’t need to in this market. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a choice of employers, but around here getting any good job at all is tough, even without constraints like yours. Looking around me, unpaid overtime is the norm rather than the exception.
Edit: Were you by any chance among those who weren’t covered by the previous overtime exemption? If so, then this bill should have you concerned.
Edited 2011-12-03 01:08 UTC
I’m curious – where are you geographically that the IT market stinks, and for what specialties, if applicable?
Digsbo,
“I’m curious – where are you geographically that the IT market stinks, and for what specialties, if applicable?”
I’ve spent the entirety of my career on the US north eastern cost.
I had always wanted to specialise in low level algorithm/systems programming. I was in Rochester, NY with my newly minted CS degree when the dotcom bust occurred. I applied to the local places, Kodak being the most famous, but there were just too few opportunities for new grads amidst the layoffs, so I scampered back home. It was a small town and my previous employer of 4 years had gone under. I jumped between low paying jobs before I moved back to NYS for a $40k job, I went broke because my expenses exceeded my income (I was flabbergasted that I couldn’t get car insurance for less than $2.2K/6mo, and my $800 rent was twice as much as I’d ever paid anywhere else for a shared living area, etc.). Believe it or not looking back at those years makes me laugh today.
I discovered that I could find much more work doing less technical jobs, like web design. But it’s quite a jump down down in salary and prestige to what I consider my core abilities. I believe my work history is working against me when I apply for the more technical R&D roles I seek. I’ve been at interviews where they wouldn’t consider abilities outside of my professional work history, even declining to look at my personal projects (I find some very interesting, I should post them here some time.)
I’ve switched to contracting projects, and I find that there is unmet demand for cheap developers doing web development, but I’ve had to lower my own rates compared to a few years ago, though it’s inching back (ugh, then there’s inflation). Also, I’ve learned the hard way that consultants cannot rely on 100% of the income they’re supposed to receive. I’m owed a couple thousand dollars that I know I’ll never see.
I’m not going to say CS is worse than any other career choice, it probably isn’t. But anyone who thinks that there are tons of jobs awaiting anyone having talent and a degree needs a reality check. The universities have been pumping out tons of grads and there haven’t been nearly enough jobs. Of course, local conditions may paint differing pictures, YMMV.
http://libn.com/2011/11/10/kamer-long-island-economy-at-a-crossroad…
My advice to anyone pursuing the field: Your classwork is much less important to getting a desirable job than having a proverbial foot in the door. Spend your energy accordingly and make connections with people having the authority to hire you upon graduation.
Your contract will most certaily say something like you’re expected to extend when the situation calls for it. Word it vaguely enough and you’ll end up with a lot of unpaid overtime ours.
But yeah, I would probably be in the “no pay? no overtime, screw you” category.
Not in Europe…
Yes, probably not. A few years ago I read somewhere (some IT magazine I think, Unix Review maybe) that Europeans value their free time more than Americans.
I also read somewhere that Europeans are lazy indolent wine-sipping cheese curdlers and that Americans have 3.7x more lassos, six-shooter pistols, and imperialist tendencies than the average Latvian.
Just sayin’.
My contract does, and always has for the decade I’m working for this company – I’m in Ireland… However, I generally get time off in lieu unofficially from the department manager for overtime that I work.
I didn’t realise that any US IT professions were entitled to overtime pay, I thought we were all equally excluded already.
While this changes absolutely nothing for me, let me join the naysayers in booing this bill.
I’ve had to work many 50+ hour weeks and weekends with absolutely no compensation, I’ve even been called for support while on vacation. If we don’t put our feet down then corporations won’t stop at anything to get more out of us for free. For most of us it’s just part of the job. As previously mentioned, the law explicitly excludes most of us on salaries from overtime pay.
This isn’t a “ban” on overtime. It’s allowing companies to make positions in these areas salaried without running afoul of the law. When you take a salaried position, you understand that you will not track your hours or punch a timeclock, so it’s impossible to receive overtime pay. Salaried workers don’t have to be in the office between certain hours, can come and go as they please, and are generally responsible only for fulfilling their duties. Executives and engineers generally work under these terms, and this legislation simply allows companies to create salaried positions for other kinds of IT workers.
Seeing this as an assault on overtime pay is a tempest in a teacup.
David,
“This isn’t a ‘ban’ on overtime. It’s allowing companies to make positions in these areas salaried without running afoul of the law.”
Yes, understood.
“Salaried workers don’t have to be in the office between certain hours, can come and go as they please, and are generally responsible only for fulfilling their duties.”
This simply isn’t true. If it is, I want to know where you work!
“Executives and engineers generally work under these terms, and this legislation simply allows companies to create salaried positions for other kinds of IT workers.”
Again, I’d love to know where engineers are treated like executives! This has never been my experience
“Seeing this as an assault on overtime pay is a tempest in a teacup.”
Not really, technically it’s probably correcting a misclassification of IT workers who were always intended to be captured under the original exemption. But the big question is, why should salaried IT workers be explicitly treated differently with regards to overtime benefits in the eyes of the law?
It seems incredibly odd for worker protection laws to single out a single profession like this.
Yeah, me too. From my experience (in America), the salaried employees are the ones working til 8 or 9 o’clock at night. Screw that
Agreed, as a salaried system admin, I don’t get to come and go as I please and only fulfill my duties. I work 60 hours per week doing everything under the sun that involves something plugged into power (Hey, come fix the microwave, yeah…)
In America, salary is not a way to pay a person to complete a given amount of work in my experience. Salary is a way to overtime exempt an employee and nothing more.
If you read the Fair Labor Standards Act section that this ever-so-cutely named “CPU Act” would modify, you would see that the IT workers are just one part of a section that enumerates many professions where the government allows businesses to create FLSA exempt positions.
rdean400,
“If you read the Fair Labor Standards Act section that this ever-so-cutely named ‘CPU Act’ would modify, you would see that the IT workers are just one part of a section that enumerates many professions where the government allows businesses to create FLSA exempt positions.”
I should have phrased it better. I just don’t understand what the law is trying to solve by saying some occupations are entitled to fair labor standards and not others. Unless there’s an external agenda, it just seems absurd. Presumably the FLSA was enacted to curb employer abuses such as non-compensated time, but this is exactly what’s now happening with IT and other workers because we’re exempt. I suspect this may have been a goal of the exceptions rather than a side effect. Some of us aren’t even that well paid.
>>>>> It seems incredibly odd for worker protection laws to single out a single profession like this.
Doesn’t it, though? From H1-B to OT we’re the corporate whipping boys and girls. IT is a tough profession when the government tries to destroy it at every turn.
Nope. This also applies to hourly employees making more than $27.63 per hour.
Which means, that I predict a lot of employees currently making less than that turning down raises if this passes.
Everyone outraged about this is an idiot. All it does is exempt the employer from mandated overtime pay. Any sane employer will grant you overtime pay as part of your contract _if_ it’s expected that you’ll be working overtime. If you desire/demand overtime as part of your contract, you mention that when they ask about salary requirements. Simple. No need for Big Brother to get between you and your boss.
My employment contract (salaried) is for 8 hours per day. I work no more, no less, and get my work done. But I don’t work in a data center or NOC. If I did, I would expect to be paid according to my work. Not a dime more or less than I negotiate. If you’re in IT and don’t know how to negotiate a reasonable wage/salary, you are an idiot.
Edited 2011-12-03 05:21 UTC
chmeee,
“Everyone outraged about this is an idiot. All it does is exempt the employer from mandated overtime pay.”
That’s a gross generalisation. One certainly doesn’t have to be an idiot to find problems with this law, which is being applied irrationally. Why should federal worker protection laws apply to some titles but not others? If the exclusions are intended to target well-paid employees, why don’t they just do that explicitly and drop the IT job title exceptions all together?
“Any sane employer will grant you overtime pay as part of your contract _if_ it’s expected that you’ll be working overtime.”
US work hours, unlike other industrialised nations, have been going up, why would companies want to pay for it when they can keep the status quo and not pay?
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/30/ilo.study/
http://econ.ucsb.edu/~pjkuhn/Research%20Papers/LongHours.pdf
“If you desire/demand overtime as part of your contract, you mention that when they ask about salary requirements. Simple. No need for Big Brother to get between you and your boss.
I get the impression many people who don’t have long hours are from places where long hours aren’t expected of them in the first place. It’s much more difficult to negotiate for something like overtime when your peers don’t have it either. It’s why corporations are lobbying against the rights of american employees to unionise; they know that individuals are too weak to stand up for their “rights”.
Just this summer, Ohio legislators walked out of their own assembly to protest an unpopular bill being pushed through to abolish public unions.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/03/usa-wisconsin-idUSN022890…
http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/analysis.cfm?ID=129_SB_5&ACT=As~…
I share your view that ideally things just work themselves out without government regulation. But the problem with this is that the corporations won’t stop influencing our governments to their own ends. Getting rid of employee protections without also getting rid of corporate ties seems to be a one sided goal.
Public sector unions should be abolished, they’re nothing but thieves guilds. But that’s a topic for another discussion.
You are right that it still picks and chooses who gets it and who doesn’t, but it’s at least a step in the direction of abolishing federal requirements in the private sector.
I will go on record that there was one time where I was required to be “on call” for a weekend as a new project went live. I didn’t like it, and protested as such. However, as a form of compensation, they did pay for conferences that weren’t directly related to the job, that I was interested in. I consider that to be just compensation for random sporadic overtime requests. Any sane employer, however demanding, will come to some agreement. The employees _do_ have a leg to stand on, as they’re the ones actually doing the work. Retarded employers will fire employees who protest, but those are also the employers that will go under because they lose talent.
If the federal government wants to have its hand in the relations of an employee’s work hours, it should mandate only that employees work an “acceptably agreed upon work week, and justly compensated for overtime.” No specifics, let the employer and employee work those out on their own. Again, that goes back to the title of my original comment: It’s the contract, stupid. Big Brother could lay out the framing of the contract while not dictating every word of it.
In Australia most professionals in the private sector are on salaries not hourly rates. You are typically expected to perform 10-20 hours unpaid overtime each week. In corporate law 70-80hr working weeks are the norm. You rarely get any time off for working overtime.
Any professional unwilling to work unpaid overtime would would quickly find themselves unemployable.
Edited 2011-12-03 07:01 UTC
80 hours a week? What’s the suicide rate for those pulling those hours? Because at that point you are literally signing your life away to the company and thus have no time to enjoy what pay you are getting.
I post those hours (not quite 80, but 60 on average and 80 on occasion) the bottom line is….. most IT guys that pull these kind of hours are not hourly anyway, they are salary……….. and when you agree to a salary, you agree to slavery ……. but you still agreed to it.
80 hours? Are you shitting us? What are you, a feudal society?
Note, the Australians I have worked with all seemed to leave at 5pm sharp and head off to the pub. All professionals.
Australian corporate law firms are run as partnerships. The partners are responsible for generating their own incomes and paying their own staff. Income is based purely on the time worked (“billable hours”). To maximise income staff have to work as many hours as possible.
If you don’t like the long hours you work for the government and take a huge pay cut.
I lol’d. I think, though, that this is pretty much the norm at all big law firms (partnerships), probably Europe, too. The money is insane. Average Columbia law school grad makes ~$190k/yr. in the private sector as a starting salary. Considering that you can finish as early as 25 (assuming you do four years undergraduate + three years law school)…
Welcome to America =)
Edited 2011-12-03 21:14 UTC
Would you provide some links please? It’s somewhat difficult to imagine that happening in Europe under current regulations:
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=2…
Here’s a comment on overtime in Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/slaves-to-the-ove…
In the mining industry (a major employer) the standard working hours are 12 hours/day for 10 days with a 5 day break.
In Australia you typically graduate from university with a professional undergraduate qualification at 20-22 years old (except for medicine which is offered as a postgraduate degree). You must pay for your degree once you start working. Virtually all university students also work 15-30 hours/week while studying.
Australians work long hours and don’t get their (very modest) pension until age 65 unless they have a serious physical or mental illness that prevents them from working.
That is why Australia is thriving and Europe is bankrupt.
I’d rather live in bankrupt Europe if it’s all the same to you, thank you very much.
Europe is great if you want to live in a tiny apartment, drive a micro car and have miserable weather.
We Australians prefer our huge houses, big powerful cars, fantastic beaches and great weather,
<offtopic>
Nah, that’s England. Not Europe at all, ask any Englishman.
… and cheap booze and kangaroo meatballs. I truly envy you the last item, I hear it’s great with spaghetti.
Edited 2011-12-04 12:02 UTC
Be careful with your wish. It becomes reality sooner than you might want. 🙂
That would be very bad joss indeed 🙂 We’d have to give up buying a shinier phone every other month and perhaps cut down on smoking too, I’m afraid.
Edited 2011-12-05 10:57 UTC
Don’t have enough facts but i have this feeling that in a way the US is slowing moving towards Chinese type working conditions.
Except in China you are generally better off because of the social support structures that a hybrid socialism economy offers like cheap or free housing, inexpensive education ect.
Edited 2011-12-03 15:07 UTC
*
What? Shanghai probably hold some kind of record as far as real estate bubbles go. The difference between the average salary and the price of a decent apartment is crazy.
Believe me, I wouldn’t live in China unless paid on a European salary, with benefits from working in a foreign country.
And afaik their social security was abolished some time ago.
You can have a private real estate bubble alongside a social housing projects. The one does not exclude the other. This is what China is, a hybrid economy.
And no socialism still exist there. Millions of people live in subsided government flats there. Saw a documentary on it not long ago.
LOL “subsided houses”..meant “subsidised houses”
There’s probably many exceptions but I read the programming job with the most extreme working hours and burnout is in the gaming industry.
Many startup studios don’t pay overtime giving the employees stock options.
The stock options gamble many times don’t pay because either the studio closes or the game flop.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with an EXEMPT employee. Not sure how IT (which started out as typewriter support) ever got exempt. I guess they feel that anyone working in the front office gets is management. As a union member I work on automated equipment. Any equipment that is associated only with OFFICE is then work for exempt employees. They are paid at a higher base pay. It ends up we get paid the same at the end of the year usually. It has been this way for decades. Everyone knows the rules.
As per the laws of this country (USA) said law proposed is illegal. Therefore if the law passes, both states and individuals can ignore the statute. Congress does not have the granted authority to pass laws concerning payrolls of private concerns, period.
In that case, the original law that this applies to is already illegal (actually, it’s unconstitutional, because Congress makes the laws, the only document governing them is the Constitution).
By the way, I do agree with you… all facets of the law (existing and new) are overreaching of Congress into the hands of the private. Then again, most of what Congress, and the government as a whole, does is blatantly unconstitutional.
Edited 2011-12-04 14:56 UTC
Thanks for the reply. Yes, the original law is also illegal, as are most of the laws coming out of congress lately. I firmly believe people that realize this have to keep harping on it before change can happen. Sounds like you are a kindred spirit, thanks…
I could have read the law wrong but it would only apply to those making over $55K/year. Not sure it would affect any union positions. The union IT workers usually have some stipulation in the contract to allow for how to handle overtime. Firefighters and police usually get comp time in exchange. They may work for 60 hours and get 30 hours comp time where they don’t have to show up to work but still get the 30 hour pay.
jefro,
I don’t know where you got the number, but the actual passage follows:
http://www1.honolulu.gov/hr/personnel/iv_7_flsa_overtime_exemptions…
“To qualify for the Learned professional exemption, all of the following tests must be met: a) Employee is compensated on a salary basis at a rate not less than $455 per week; and b) Employee’s primary duty involves performing office or non-manual work requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.”
Which comes out to $23k per year more or less, depending on vacation.
Since I already have it open, there are other sections of interest:
“d) The exemption does not apply to occupations in which most employees acquire skill by experience, or occupations that may be performed with: i) Only the general knowledge acquired by an academic degree in any field;
ii) Knowledge acquired through an apprenticeship; or iii) Training in the performance of routine, mental, manual, mechanical or physical processes.”
Prior to this past decade, computer workers would NOT have been exempted by the fact that most of us were able to become qualified computer workers without advanced degrees. However, we are the only profession to have a section dedicated to our explicit exemption:
“F. Computer employee exemption
1. To qualify for the Computer employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:
a) …not less than $455 per week… or not less than $27.63 per hour
b) …a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker…
c) Employee’s primary duty involves: …determine hardware, software, or system functional applications…Design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs…”
(I cut out text because the source was very verbose)
“2. The computer employer exemption does not apply to employees engaged in the manufacture or repair of computer hardware and related equipment….”
I once worked at a tech support shop side by side with repair technicians, but I was there doing web development. Not that I realised any of this back then, but I would have been the only employee not federally protected against unpaid overtime.
I’ve beat the horse to death though. It just infuriates me that the law is such as ass sometimes.
I’ve had employers that would pay you overtime for anything over 40 hours if you were on call and had to come in after hours to fix anything. But, I have also had an employer who abused this, expecting me to work 50 and 60 hour weeks without any comp time when I was scheduled to work a 45 Hour work week (1 hour unpaid lunch everyday). What made it really suck was that they did not have any really good reason for the overtime other than they expected it.
After having a really bad fiscal period, This same employer also decided to dock all salaried employees for a weeks worth of pay (to help with finances) which was supposed to be done via scheduled unpaid days off, and then they got upset with me for complaining when they wouldn’t allow me to schedule to take the unpaid days off from work…
The same said employer then decided to terminate my employment after 4 1/2 years of employment stating that Upper management had determined that I wasn’t a suitable fit for the department…. Yeah whatever. I’m much happier working as an hourly employee at my current job as a Data Center Administrator, beats the hell out of working as a Desktop Support / Helpdesk Technician.
Can someone explain how this works?
I used to work in the IT field and I have friends who still do. So am I correct in interpreting this in that if you are on an hourly wage and exceed 40 hours you don’t qualify for time and a half?
riversj,
“Can someone explain how this works? I used to work in the IT field and I have friends who still do. So am I correct in interpreting this in that if you are on an hourly wage and exceed 40 hours you don’t qualify for time and a half?”
I’m not sure how it affects hourly workers. Presumably they will get paid as long as they’re on the clock.
Most of the controversy is over the exceptions for salaried computer workers, who aren’t legally entitled to any compensation at all for working overtime hours. The same person with the same salary in a non-exempt occupation would be compensated for overtime at time and a half.