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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:41PM
To explain this a bit more, if there is work it's your responsibility to get it done. If it doesn't get done, when it's time to figure out if keeping you on board is worth it you will have a harder time convincing the management if you work 40 hours a week and everyone else works 50 etc. Of course it's hard to know where you stand, since pretty much your salary is a business secret int he US. So it's hard for you to know that the guy working 50-60 hours to your 40 may make twice what you make. The corporations like it that way, it serves their interests.
Good ideas are to ask HR during the hiring process questions that will give you the idea of what everyone int he company considers a workweek. Though it many places they are open about it, and the hiring manager will tell you everyone is expected to put in X amount of overtime a week. I personally don't work for a place that forces you to do overtime, and if I do stay late it's cause I know I'm on a roll and I can get a lot more done now than if I came back the next day. But I worked for a place where I would work 60 sometimes 70 hours, and life was just not worth living.