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Fran Sussner Rodgers writes in the NYT that a little-noticed change in the American workplace is about to occur when 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 theshold. 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, so 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."
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:40PM
there is a strange word in the US english system, called 'exempt'. ie, excluded.
the tech lobby paid congress to lower their 'costs' (wages for us working class stiffs). for decades, our people were paid overtime for all hours over 40. then, the lobbiests came and told congress 'we want our tech workers to be exempt from being paid over time. we want this and we're big so give it to us!'
they got it. a good 20 or more years ago, mabye even 30, its been this way.
the general way to understand this is: if you are a human robot and you have no 'creative control' over your job or how long things take, then you are hourly and not exempt from overtime. otoh, if you have any creativity at all (ie, you get to decide some things even if your boss makes 99% of the judgement calls) then you are no longer an 'unskilled tech worker' and you are exempt from overtime. so, even if you are doing what you are told and don't have any real ownership of the project, but maybe you are writing software, you will never be paid overtime in the US laws because 'writing software' will never quality as non-exempt. if your boss gives you a job that takes 50 hours and demands you do it this week, you have to fit it in and you cannot bill beyond 40.
its fucked up! in a nutshell, its wrong and its fake and it depresses wages and lets companies keep more of their profits (which is ALL the USA is about, for the last 20 or so years, now).
and so, only assembly line workers get overtime and even then, I'm sure there are loopholes to avoid paying those guys their fair share, as well.
the US is the least fair of all the modern countries in the world. we have a lot of good infrastructure here to get business and tech done, but we refuse to treat our people with any respect.
I've heard its quite different in europe, for example. and the diff between the ceo pay and worker pay is over 400x here in the US. I think its much more reasonable over seas.
the US seems to have a 'give all your money to us, the super rich' mentality. a scorched earth winner-take-all view of things. if anyone thinks the US is going to be around in its current shape 10 years from now, you have another thing coming (as they say). this is not sustainable; and I wonder at what point, the lower and middle classes will finally revolt. it will take a shortage of supply of many key goods, but that's coming too, if we don't change our ways.
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