Which is the worse for America: increasing the minimum wage or increasing overtime?
QuoteWhatever Happened to Overtime?
It's one reason we're poorer than our parents. And Obama could fix it—without Congress.
By NICK HANAUER
November 17, 2014
POLITICO Magazine
If you're in the American middle class—or what's left of it—here's how you probably feel. You feel like you're struggling harder than your parents did, working longer hours than ever before, and yet falling further and further behind. The reason you feel this way is because most of you are—falling further behind, that is. Adjusted for inflation, average salaries have actually dropped since the early 1970s, while hours for full-time workers have steadily climbed.
Meanwhile, a handful of wealthy capitalists like me are growing wealthy beyond our parents' wildest dreams, in large part because we're able to take advantage of your misfortune.
So what's changed since the 1960s and '70s? Overtime pay, in part. Your parents got a lot of it, and you don't. And it turns out that fair overtime standards are to the middle class what the minimum wage is to low-income workers: not everything, but an indispensable labor protection that is absolutely essential to creating a broad and thriving middle class. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime. You know many people like that? Probably not. By 2013, just 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime pay, according to a report published by the Economic Policy Institute. And so business owners like me have been able to make the other 89 percent of you work unlimited overtime hours for no additional pay at all.
In my defense, I'm only playing by the rules—rules written by and for wealthy capitalists like me. But the main point is this: These are rules that President Barack Obama has the power to change with the stroke of a pen, and with no prior congressional approval. The president could, on his own, restore federal overtime standards to where they were at their 1975 peak, covering the same 65 percent of salaried workers who were covered 40 years ago. If he did that, about 10.4 million Americans would suddenly be earning a lot more than they are now. Last March, Obama asked the Labor Department to update "outdated" regulations that mean, as the president put it in his memo, "millions of Americans lack the protections of overtime and even the right to the minimum wage." But Obama was not specific about the changes he wanted to see.
So let me be specific. To get the country back to the same equitable standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to raise the overtime threshold to $69,000. In other words, if you earn $69,000 or less, the law would require that you be paid overtime when you worked more than 40 hours a week. That's 10.4 million middle-class Americans with more money in their pockets or more time to spend with friends and family. And if corporate America didn't want to pay you time and a half, it would need to hire hundreds of thousands of additional workers to pick up the slack—slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up wages.
The Obama administration could, on its own, go even further. Many millions of Americans are currently exempt from the overtime rules—teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals, etc.—and corporate leaders are lobbying hard to expand "computer professional" to mean just about anybody who uses a computer. Which is almost everybody. But were the Labor Department instead to narrow these exemptions, millions more Americans would receive the overtime pay they deserve. Why, you might ask, are so many workers exempted from overtime? That's a fair question. To be truthful, I have no earthly idea why. What I can tell you is that these exemptions work out very well for your employers.
Since the Republican Party's takeover of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, all the talk in Washington has been about what won't get done because of gridlock between the White House and Capitol Hill. And Obama has talked of moving things forward by making unilateral changes to immigration law and climate protections.
But what about the most basic need of all—jump-starting the real economy by giving more middle-class Americans a fair shake? You would think that for a Democratic administration, raising the threshold back to where it once was would be a no-brainer, but I have grave doubts that administration officials are heading in this direction. In fact they are likely to raise the threshold only partly, and the Obama administration has not yet grappled with the broader question of how moves such as this are critical to helping to restore America's middle class. How do I know? Intuition. OK, I admit it, more than intuition. I've had conversations with administration officials about their forthcoming policy changes. And the scuttlebutt out of the Labor Department looks promising—for corporations. Not the middle class.
It is my sense, based on my conversations with government officials, that the administration is buying the line from corporate lobbyists who are arguing that such rule changes would devastate their bottom lines, forcing them to lay off workers. You know, the old trickle-down gambit—if workers earn more money, it would be bad for business, the economy and workers. The Obama team, in other words, is buying into the same discredited theories that were used to erode the threshold in the first place. Officials will very likely raise the overtime threshold just enough to say they're doing something, without actually doing much of anything for the middle class or our demand-starved economy at all.
But here's a little secret from the corner office: The arguments that the corporate lobbyists are making—about how badly business will be hurt—just don't add up. What is adding up instead is the trillions of dollars in corporate profits and stock gains that corporations have made over the same decades that your hours climbed and your wages fell. From 1950 to 1980, during the good old days of U.S. economic might—the era in which the Great American Middle Class was created—corporate profits averaged a healthy 6 percent of GDP. But since then, corporate profits have doubled to more than 12 percent of GDP.
That's about a trillion dollars more a year in profit. And since then, wages as a percentage of GDP have fallen, you guessed it, by about the same 6 percent or 7 percent of GDP. Coincidence? Probably not. What very few Americans seem to understand is that that extra trillion dollars isn't profit because it had to be, or needs to be or should be. That extra trillion dollars is profit because powerful people like me prefer it to be. It could have been spent on your wages. Or it could have gone into discounts to you, the consumer. We capitalists will tell you that our increasing profits are the result of some complex economic force with the immutability and righteousness of divine law. But the truth is, it is simply a result of a difference in negotiating power. As in, we have it. And you don't.
***
Still, it's hard to blame the administration for doing so little to defend middle-class workers when most middle-class workers aren't even aware that they're being ripped off. But I know. And a lot of other business owners know. We just don't talk about it. You see, we capitalists will never actually ask you to work overtime. I don't even track your hours. I just make it clear that I trust you to get your job done in the time allotted. And then I hand you twice as much work as you can reasonably do in a 40-hour week. But this downward pressure on wages doesn't end there.
In the absence of a law requiring me to pay you overtime if you earn under a certain amount, you end up working harder—and the harder you work, the fewer employees I need. The fewer employees I need, the higher the unemployment rate. The higher the unemployment rate, the more leverage I have to "encourage" you to "do what it takes" to keep your job. And so you work even more hours, pushing unemployment up and wages down. And that, my friends, is one of the little tricks that keeps you poor and me rich.
This is why, in a recent Gallup poll, salaried Americans now report working an average of 47 hours a week, not the allegedly standard 40. And 18 percent of you report working more than 60 hours per week. Yet at the same time, you're taking only about 77 percent of your paid time off. According to a survey commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association, U.S. workers now use an average of only 16 vacation days a year out of the nearly 21 days they earn—the lowest in more than four decades. Why? Often because they're terrified of working fewer hours and falling short of their employers' demands for ever more productivity. And many of these unused vacation days are forfeited: an estimated $52.4 billion worth each year that goes to owners like me.
Now obviously, take away our license to force 10.4 million Americans to work extra hours for nothing, and smart capitalists like me would try to limit overtime as much as possible. I mean, time-and-a-half pay sure adds up fast! So many of you would be unlikely to see much of an immediate bump in take-home pay. Instead, we capitalists would be forced to hire millions more people to do the work you currently do for free. That would drive down unemployment. And a tighter labor market would drive up wages for the first time in 40 years.
So you see, when I say that the overtime threshold is the minimum wage for the middle class, I'm not just playing with words. In the exact same way that the erosion of the federal minimum wage—from an inflation-adjusted peak of about $11 an hour in 1968 to only $7.25 an hour today—has held down wages for low-income Americans, the simultaneous erosion of the overtime threshold has also held down wages for the American middle class. And just like raising the minimum wage would nudge up incomes for those workers earning somewhat above it, restoring the overtime threshold would push up incomes for many workers currently earning above $69,000 too.
Of course, capitalists like me will tell you that when we cut into profits, the entire economy is damaged. And think of all the investment that corporate profits make possible. What do executives like me do with all that extra money? Why, invest in creating good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans like you, of course.
Unfortunately, that's not exactly true either. Mostly, we use profits to manipulate our stock price for personal gain.
Here's a little history that will explain how: Back in the 1970s, when the share of total U.S. income that the top 0.1 percent of households got was at a 100-year low, corporate executives received most of their compensation in the form of a salary, just like you. But since the late 1980s, the largest component of income for the top 0.1 percent has been stock-based pay. This shift toward compensation via stock options and grants means that CEOs are directly incentivized to increase the share price of their company's stock.
Building better products that lead to higher sales and fatter margins are the traditional way for a CEO to push up the price of his stock. But that's so old-fashioned. So yesterday. Instead, ever since a former Wall Street CEO in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission back in 1982 loosened the rules that define stock manipulation (beginning to see a historical pattern here?), U.S. corporations have increasingly resorted to stock buybacks to prop up share prices. According to a report in the Harvard Business Review by professor William Lazonkick—"Profits Without Prosperity"—over the past 10 years, America's largest companies, those making up the S&P 500, have devoted a staggering 54 percent of their profits to buying back shares, reducing the total number outstanding and thus increasing the value of the remaining shares owned by capitalists like me.
A stock buyback, in case you are wondering, is when a public company buys its own shares. "Why on earth would a company do that?" you ask. To push the stock price higher, of course—which benefits senior managers who are all paid in stock—rather than, say, investing in R&D or in building new factories. Or paying you overtime for all those extra hours you work.
I want to be clear: I've done stock buybacks. We all do it. In order to be a public company today, you practically can't avoid it, despite how obviously corrupt it is. Ever wonder why the stock market is soaring again, while the real economy is just slogging along? Buybacks are a big reason. According to data compiled by Mustafa Erdem Sakinç of The Academic-Industry Research Network, public U.S. corporations of all sizes have spent an astonishing $6.9 trillion on stock buybacks over the past decade alone. $6.9 trillion! That's about enough to run the entire federal government—for two years! Let me tell you how it works. Your institutional investors will call you, maybe after some bad news that drives your stock down a bit, and they'll say, "Hey, your stock is undervalued, don't you think? And if you guys won't support your own stock, then why should we?" Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge. But you will not be able to grasp the size of this, relative to your situation, without some examples.
Take low-wage king Wal-Mart. Over the past 10 years, according to data compiled from its public filings, Wal-Mart has spent more than $65.4 billion on stock buybacks—about 47 percent of its profits. That's an average of more than $6.5 billion a year in stock buybacks, enough to give each of its 1.4 million U.S. workers a $4,670-a-year raise. It is also, coincidentally, an amount roughly equivalent to the estimated $6.2 billion Wal-Mart costs U.S. taxpayers every year in food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing and other public assistance to its many impoverished employees.
And further up the wage scale there's IBM. Once an icon of innovation for its proud legacy of investing in basic research, the 21st-century IBM has instead chosen to spend an astounding $117.5 billion on stock buybacks since 2003—a remarkable 89.4 percent of total profits.
What else might we have done with that $6.9 trillion other than manipulate stock prices? Well, we could have forgiven the $1 trillion in student debt currently crippling the purchasing power of young Americans; funded the looming $3.6 trillion maintenance backlog on our roads, bridges, dams, schools and the rest of our nation's public infrastructure; boosted our nation's annual R&D expenditures by more than 20 percent a year; and still have enough money left over to buy every man, woman and child in the U.S. a round of drinks. Every Friday night. For the next 15 years.
Or, we could spend the approximately $700 billion in stock buybacks per year putting all 9 million unemployed Americans back to work at more than 2½ times our nation's pitiful $28,000 median wage.
If this sounds a little bit like a Ponzi scheme, that's because it is. I buy my shares back from investors and speculators, who then use that money to buy more shares. We get richer riding this merry-go-round, but the money never touches the real economy. Perhaps you've wondered how the stock market hit 17,000 while, at the same time, five years after the end of the Great Recession, the real economy that you live in still kind of sucks? Stock buybacks.
So if you're still thinking that higher wages or fewer hours of overtime for you and your coworkers might bankrupt the public company you work for, I encourage you to do this: Send an email to your CFO and ask him or her how much your company has spent on stock buybacks over the past 10 years in both dollars and in percent of pretax profits? Seriously. Do it right now. And while you're waiting for a reply from your CFO, let's have an honest conversation about the way the economy really works.
Forget everything you've been told about how the rich are job creators—that the more money we have, the more we invest, the more jobs we create, and the better the economy is for everybody. As our epidemic of stock buybacks clearly illustrates, capitalists like me already have more money than we know what to do with. Indeed, smart investors are struggling to cope with what Bain & Co. has termed "capital superabundance," marked by a tripling of global capital since 1990 despite the ongoing stagnation of the underlying economy. Meanwhile, even as this glut of financial capital continues to grow, new technologies are dramatically reducing demand for capital.
It once cost billions to finance a new steel mill, the symbol of the old economy. But the new economy just isn't nearly as capital-intensive—in other words, companies don't need anything like this huge amount of reinvestment in stocks. For example, take Amazon. I was an early investor—it's where I made much of my fortune. How much capital did Jeff Bezos initially raise to start up Amazon? One million dollars. Last year, Amazon reported over $74 billion in sales. It is this "investment supply–demand imbalance," writes Bain, that is decisively shifting power "from owners of capital to owners of good ideas."
In the information economy of the 21st century, it is not capital accumulation that creates growth and prosperity, but, rather, the virtuous cycle of innovation and demand. The more innovators and entrepreneurs we have converting ideas into products and services, the higher our standard of living, and the more people who can afford to consume these products and services, the greater the incentive to innovate. Thus, the key to growth and prosperity is to fully include as many Americans as possible in our economy, both as innovators and consumers.
In plain English, the real economy is you: Raise wages, and one increases demand. Increase demand and one increases jobs, wages and innovation. The real economy is simply the interplay between consumers and businesses. On the other hand, as we've learned from the past 40 years of slow growth and record stock buybacks, not even an infinite supply of capital can persuade a CEO to hire more workers absent demand for the products and services they produce.
The twisted irony is, when you work more hours for less pay, you hurt not only yourself, you hurt the real economy by depressing wages, increasing unemployment and reducing demand and innovation. Ironically, when you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me.
Which brings us back to President Obama. He is hearing daily from corporate executives and lobbyists that raising your wages would be bad. For you. So he won't, unless he hears from you—all of you—demanding the same fair overtime protections for today's middle class that were once enjoyed by your parents.
Contact the White House. Do it for yourself. Or, at the very least, have the courtesy to do it for me. Because honestly, I'm beginning to run out of customers. In the meanwhile, I've got to go buy back more shares ahead of the next earnings report.
Nick Hanauer is a Seattle-based entrepreneur.
No, I don't feel that way. #sorrynotsorry
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2014, 10:48:49 PM
No, I don't feel that way. #sorrynotsorry
He's not talking to you or Lemonjello, even if you do still have to work for a living.
QuoteIn the absence of a law requiring me to pay you overtime if you earn under a certain amount, you end up working harder—and the harder you work, the fewer employees I need. The fewer employees I need, the higher the unemployment rate. The higher the unemployment rate, the more leverage I have to "encourage" you to "do what it takes" to keep your job. And so you work even more hours, pushing unemployment up and wages down. And that, my friends, is one of the little tricks that keeps you poor and me rich.
Whoa. Maybe this guy does deserve to be rich. :hmm:
OK, I finished reading it. Nick Hanauer for God-King.
Ide, can we lure you back to the banner of our Southern Confederacy under the jaunty banner of the Kingfish? The Kingfish is ever waiting under Plaquemine until the darkest day of his people's need.
Southern Politicians had such colorful nicknames back then.
Who the fuck makes 69k or less? :x
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 12:28:13 AM
OK, I finished reading it. Nick Hanauer for God-King.
Somehow, I figured you'd dig him. The Free Marketeers probably won't, though. The only thing worse than somebody speaking that kind of truth is a 1%er doing it.
I am certainly not in the Seedy/Ide pseudo wanna be communist camp, but I don't really understand how any can take a disapassionate look at wealth accumulation in the US over the last couple of decades and say "Yep, this is how the system is supposed to work! Awesome!"
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 19, 2014, 10:51:48 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2014, 10:48:49 PM
No, I don't feel that way. #sorrynotsorry
He's not talking to you or Lemonjello, even if you do still have to work for a living.
Is garbon super-rich? :hmm:
Quote from: Berkut on November 20, 2014, 01:20:47 AM
I am certainly not in the Seedy/Ide pseudo wanna be communist camp, but I don't really understand how any can take a disapassionate look at wealth accumulation in the US over the last couple of decades and say "Yep, this is how the system is supposed to work! Awesome!"
I'm reading Piketty right now (yes I am going to keep bringing it up for the next few weeks) and he demonstrates quite clearly that this is not something that is going to change without a huge intervention from the state.
Generally, he shows that periods of rapid growth (like the one the West experienced in a better part of the 20th century) are an anomaly, not a norm, and the current "stagnation" is in fact what it is going to be in the West now (and this is almost independent of government policies, as long as you have a stable government - his claim is Roosevelt, Reagan and Thatcher had almost no influence on the economies of their respective states - as national economies simply followed demographics and the state of global economy, especially reflecting any differences between economies of individual states, with the "front runners" always eventually slowing down and the "catchers up" speeding up*). Slow economic growth and slow population growth means that capital becomes much more important than labour (because with no growth of either, essentially, every generation simply replicates the social structure of the previous generation, unless you intervene in a very powerful manner - e.g. by introducing high inheritance, property and capital gains taxes) and social mobility grinds almost to a halt.
*This being distorted, however, when a significant part of the capital in the "catchers up" was owned by the "front runners" (i.e. the "catchers up" have a chance to catch up for good only if they own themselves most of the capital used in their own country).
Picketty's finding for the United States was that the biggest recent driver of economic inequality is not the increase in capital/labor ratio, but rather increasing inequality of labor income. Which he suggests is due to the rise of the supermanagerial class that can effectively set their own comp.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2014, 02:37:45 AM
Picketty's finding for the United States was that the biggest recent driver of economic inequality is not the increase in capital/labor ratio, but rather increasing inequality of labor income. Which he suggests is due to the rise of the supermanagerial class that can effectively set their own comp.
Yeah that makes sense. Haven't gotten that far in the book yet. :P
My point was more that the economic stagnation is going to contribute to inequality.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 02:39:06 AM
My point was more that the economic stagnation is going to contribute to inequality.
It might but Picketty's thesis is that "r" holds pretty steady over time at about 5 percent. An example being 19th century gilts or rentes. But US treasuries are yielding a lot lower than that. It's not so clear that there are low risk 5 percent returns easily available right now, even for the very rich.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 01:40:29 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 19, 2014, 10:51:48 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2014, 10:48:49 PM
No, I don't feel that way. #sorrynotsorry
He's not talking to you or Lemonjello, even if you do still have to work for a living.
Is garbon super-rich? :hmm:
He's rich enough to vote Republican. Also, under 30 and climbing. If he's not affluent now, he will be.
Yes, garbon truly bucks the demo, bless his gay minority heart. I'm sure there's a few cases of Jews voting for the NDSAP, too.
"Yeah, they're antisemitic...but they're big on defense spending, and foreign policy is important to me."
Soooo..
The rich use their disproportionate economic power to ensure that the middle class gets poorer and poorer and they get richer and richer.
For more updates into this amazing new trend, read 'Das Kapital' (printed 1867).
It may come as a great novelty for Americans.
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:24:38 AM
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
The best lie of the rich - convincing everybody that inflation is a bad thing. ;)
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 20, 2014, 03:19:14 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 01:40:29 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 19, 2014, 10:51:48 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2014, 10:48:49 PM
No, I don't feel that way. #sorrynotsorry
He's not talking to you or Lemonjello, even if you do still have to work for a living.
Is garbon super-rich? :hmm:
He's rich enough to vote Republican. Also, under 30 and climbing. If he's not affluent now, he will be.
That's a very rosy and optimistic view of my life trajectory. :)
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:19:13 AM
Yes, garbon truly bucks the demo, bless his gay minority heart. I'm sure there's a few cases of Jews voting for the NDSAP, too.
"Yeah, they're antisemitic...but they're big on defense spending, and foreign policy is important to me."
It is about balance, darling. We get dreadful results when any one party has too much power.
Quote from: Martim Silva on November 20, 2014, 09:20:28 AM
Soooo..
The rich use their disproportionate economic power to ensure that the middle class gets poorer and poorer and they get richer and richer.
For more updates into this amazing new trend, read 'Das Kapital' (printed 1867).
It may come as a great novelty for Americans.
Thanks Martin.
Now using only the text of Das Kapital, please explain precisely the mechanism by which this happens.
BTW on wealth accumulation, is wealth accumulated due to stocks held rising in value being counted in that? If yes, how big a portion that is? Because that's not "real" wealth. Honest question, I have no idea.
management being able to set their own wages while not being owners is indeed an idiotic trend.
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 09:59:57 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:19:13 AM
Yes, garbon truly bucks the demo, bless his gay minority heart. I'm sure there's a few cases of Jews voting for the NDSAP, too.
"Yeah, they're antisemitic...but they're big on defense spending, and foreign policy is important to me."
It is about balance, darling. We get dreadful results when any one party has too much power.
I'm sure they appreciate your support, Token. :P Remind them of that when they try to make you count the jelly beans in the jar to vote.
Keep going, Seedy. I think you've just about turned him Democrat.
Save it for your anonymous hate mail in cut-out newspaper and magazine letters to Nancy Pelosi.
Quote from: derspiess on November 20, 2014, 11:04:24 AM
Keep going, Seedy. I think you've just about turned him Democrat.
:lol:
Quote from: Tamas on November 20, 2014, 10:57:18 AM
BTW on wealth accumulation, is wealth accumulated due to stocks held rising in value being counted in that? If yes, how big a portion that is? Because that's not "real" wealth.
That is not really true. Sure, you have speculative bubbles now and then (which, by the way, still accumulate significant wealth for speculators who manage to sell at the right time), but at least in theory the difference between the net asset value of a company and the overall capitalisation represents goodwill which may not be tangible, but can still be a substantial representation of wealth (and in fact for a company like Apple or Google is most of their wealth).
Is the article accurate that the legal requirement of an employer to pay overtime is tied to the employee's annual income?
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 11:57:13 AM
Is the article accurate that the legal requirement of an employer to pay overtime is tied to the employee's annual income?
Out of curiosity, are you being paid overtime in your job?
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 11:57:13 AM
Is the article accurate that the legal requirement of an employer to pay overtime is tied to the employee's annual income?
How much a worker is paid is only one of the factors that determines whether or not they are exempt from overtime requirements.
In general, even if the article is right, and that's not hard to achieve (not paying overtime is bad for the employee, good for the employer. O RLY?), this is again something that is impossible to properly influence via laws and whatnot.
Even if you have a law or not, if your boss is not paying it to you, you will only challenge it when you feel the boss is in no position to let you go. Otherwise you will just shut up and do the work regardless, law or not.
Y'all do realize he's talking only about *salaried* employees, right? :unsure:
Quote from: Tamas on November 20, 2014, 12:51:27 PM
In general, even if the article is right, and that's not hard to achieve (not paying overtime is bad for the employee, good for the employer. O RLY?), this is again something that is impossible to properly influence via laws and whatnot.
Even if you have a law or not, if your boss is not paying it to you, you will only challenge it when you feel the boss is in no position to let you go. Otherwise you will just shut up and do the work regardless, law or not.
As long as you make it a mandatory regulation, there are ways of enforcing this by a regulator/watchdog type of authority, if you want to. For example, it is extremely easy these days (in some industries more than other, but still much easier than, say, 100 years ago) to check the actual time an employee spent working/being present in the office/factory etc. Most professional service industries in fact require employees to precisely record any time spent working, either for internal productivity reporting purposes or indeed as a basis for billing a client. It is not so difficult then to run a regulatory audit every now and then on a firm/company to check if its overtime payments match the work records, if there is a political will to do so.
With rare exception, all I see at the http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/faq.htm is the same language over and over.
Quote...is a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee
...are a matter of agreement between the employer and the employee (or the employee's representative).
...these benefits are a matter of agreement between the employer and the employee (or the employee's representative).
...are generally a matter of agreement between an employer and employee (or the employee's representative).
This is a matter generally to be determined by the employer.
is a matter of agreement between the employer and the employee (or the employee's representative).
:lol: Just the way employers like it.
For instance, I've applied to several jobs that are classified as "non-merit". Why is a job classified as non-merit? Because the employer says it is.
Here the right to overtime pay is statutory and cannot be bargained away. That statute has a number of exemptions but none of those are related to the amount an employee earns except indirectly as one of the exemptions is for an employee who is a manager.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 12:04:35 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 11:57:13 AM
Is the article accurate that the legal requirement of an employer to pay overtime is tied to the employee's annual income?
Out of curiosity, are you being paid overtime in your job?
I am not an employee ;)
Here it's not tied to salary or anything. However, as per the reasons Tamas points out, they are often not compensated in practice.
You can, by law, exchange one hour of overtime for a reduction of one hour in your regular schedule, too.
What happened to Ovaltine btw?
Quote from: The Brain on November 20, 2014, 01:45:06 PM
What happened to Ovaltine btw?
It's still here, and it's delicious.
In the old pre recession days, not giving overtime pay was the path to high employee turnover. Now, you can just jerk 'em around because there is another sucker needing that job.
Not that I do that shit.
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 20, 2014, 01:51:53 PM
In the old pre recession days, not giving overtime pay was the path to high employee turnover. Now, you can just jerk 'em around because there is another sucker needing that job.
Not that I do that shit.
Here the regulatory fines for doing that create a considerable disincentive for most established businesses.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:01:06 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 20, 2014, 01:51:53 PM
In the old pre recession days, not giving overtime pay was the path to high employee turnover. Now, you can just jerk 'em around because there is another sucker needing that job.
Not that I do that shit.
Here the regulatory fines for doing that create a considerable disincentive for most established businesses.
In Spain, nobody's going to report their employer with a 25% unemployment rate. You can report anonymously, but in most small firms the ambient pressure on potential "rats" (even from fellow workers that don't want to risk their jobs) is just too high.
Even in the "good times", people preferred not to get in trouble in order to be able to progress their careers.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:01:06 PM
Here the regulatory fines for doing that create a considerable disincentive for most established businesses.
Here the profit from doing that creates a considerable incentive for most established businesses.
People are good sports. :)
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2014, 02:31:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:01:06 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 20, 2014, 01:51:53 PM
In the old pre recession days, not giving overtime pay was the path to high employee turnover. Now, you can just jerk 'em around because there is another sucker needing that job.
Not that I do that shit.
Here the regulatory fines for doing that create a considerable disincentive for most established businesses.
In Spain, nobody's going to report their employer with a 25% unemployment rate. You can report anonymously, but in most small firms the ambient pressure on potential "rats" (even from fellow workers that don't want to risk their jobs) is just too high.
Even in the "good times", people preferred not to get in trouble in order to be able to progress their careers.
While our system does respond to complaint driven cases, the employment standards branch also conducts investigations independant of employee complaints and they have wide ranging powers to conduct audits. As someone said earlier, it is relatively easy to audit hours worked and whether appropriate overtime pay was given.
Wherever I have worked, we have had a tendency oscillate between needing to fill out time sheets and not needing to fill them out.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:37:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:01:06 PM
Here the regulatory fines for doing that create a considerable disincentive for most established businesses.
Here the profit from doing that creates a considerable incentive for most established businesses.
That just means the regulatory fines are not high enough. In addition to facing an order to pay all outstanding overtime within a certain period of time, employers also face escalating fines for each breach of the legislation. Each employee not paid overtime is considered an independant breach and so the fines add up to the point where it quickly becomes unprofitable to breach the legislation.
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 02:40:33 PM
Wherever I have worked, we have had a tendency oscillate between needing to fill out time sheets and not needing to fill them out.
We've gone back & forth on that at my company the past 9 years. For the past 2 years they've been OMG Extremely Important!! but they won't tell us why. But there's some project manager that sends you a nastygram on Sunday if you haven't submitted the previous week's timesheet. Sometimes he starts nagging you Friday afternoon if you haven't started one yet.
So I don't even think about doing mine until late Friday afternoon and sometimes if I'm busy I'll forget until the following Monday. Drives the dude crazy, apparently.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:42:11 PM
That just means the regulatory fines are not high enough. In addition to facing an order to pay all outstanding overtime within a certain period of time, employers also face escalating fines for each breach of the legislation. Each employee not paid overtime is considered an independant breach and so the fines add up to the point where it quickly becomes unprofitable to breach the legislation.
This is America, man; every regulatory fine is never high enough, from labor and environmental standards to financial compliance and homeland security standards. Why spend more when cutting the check for regulatory fines is always easier?
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 02:40:33 PM
Wherever I have worked, we have had a tendency oscillate between needing to fill out time sheets and not needing to fill them out.
I've noticed that some online job application software platforms ask your salary and then how many estimated hours a week you worked. I always put down 50 to 55, even though filling out the time sheet for payroll took 30 seconds, since it was always 40 hours a week.
The elimination of overtime and the use of exempt employees saves time in determining labor costs in the budget. A lot easier to say we pay this guy $X a year as a 40 hour/week employee than it is to deal with overtime, which can totally fuck up budget projections.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:48:39 PM
This is America, man; every regulatory fine is never high enough, from labor and environmental standards to financial compliance and homeland security standards. Why spend more when cutting the check for regulatory fines is always easier?
:lol: Do you know a single person who has been withheld over time pay due them? I don't.
Quote from: derspiess on November 20, 2014, 02:43:49 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 02:40:33 PM
Wherever I have worked, we have had a tendency oscillate between needing to fill out time sheets and not needing to fill them out.
We've gone back & forth on that at my company the past 9 years. For the past 2 years they've been OMG Extremely Important!! but they won't tell us why. But there's some project manager that sends you a nastygram on Sunday if you haven't submitted the previous week's timesheet. Sometimes he starts nagging you Friday afternoon if you haven't started one yet.
So I don't even think about doing mine until late Friday afternoon and sometimes if I'm busy I'll forget until the following Monday. Drives the dude crazy, apparently.
My guess is that the current management philosophy is metrics driven, so for his job he needs the timesheets to create the various charts and graphs and trends to report and/or "analyze".
Quote from: derspiess on November 20, 2014, 02:43:49 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 02:40:33 PM
Wherever I have worked, we have had a tendency oscillate between needing to fill out time sheets and not needing to fill them out.
We've gone back & forth on that at my company the past 9 years. For the past 2 years they've been OMG Extremely Important!! but they won't tell us why. But there's some project manager that sends you a nastygram on Sunday if you haven't submitted the previous week's timesheet. Sometimes he starts nagging you Friday afternoon if you haven't started one yet.
So I don't even think about doing mine until late Friday afternoon and sometimes if I'm busy I'll forget until the following Monday. Drives the dude crazy, apparently.
Yeah that's what happens. Sometimes they are very important and then all of a sudden they are not. Most recently my current company has gone to the they are not important as no one is looking at data so you do not need to fill them out.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 02:55:13 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:48:39 PM
This is America, man; every regulatory fine is never high enough, from labor and environmental standards to financial compliance and homeland security standards. Why spend more when cutting the check for regulatory fines is always easier?
:lol: Do you know a single person who has been withheld over time pay due them? I don't.
I was addressing the larger issue of regulatory fines, not those specific to overtime.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:53:40 PMI always put down 50 to 55, even though filling out the time sheet for payroll took 30 seconds, since it was always 40 hours a week.
I used to fill them out accurately, but HR gave me a hard time and told me to just put 40 every time. I asked them why I needed to do it at all if it was always going to be like that.
I'm guessing it's merely CYA for regulatory compliance.
I haven't been paid overtime at any job in at least the last 20 years.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 03:03:23 PM
I was addressing the larger issue of regulatory fines, not those specific to overtime.
Which presumably includes those for overtime. :lol:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 03:08:02 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 03:03:23 PM
I was addressing the larger issue of regulatory fines, not those specific to overtime.
Which presumably includes those for overtime. :lol:
The concept of overtime, like dinosaurs and pensions, is merely a blip in history and will go down in the books as a late-20th century novelty in economics. You won't have to worry about it much longer.
Changing the subject works too.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 09:27:50 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:24:38 AM
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
The best lie of the rich - convincing everybody that inflation is a bad thing. ;)
Inflation, the British cure to everything :wub:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 02:55:13 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:48:39 PM
This is America, man; every regulatory fine is never high enough, from labor and environmental standards to financial compliance and homeland security standards. Why spend more when cutting the check for regulatory fines is always easier?
:lol: Do you know a single person who has been withheld over time pay due them? I don't.
I knew one person who claimed that was the case. I never paid much attention or had much sympathy as he was mad lazy and did his job poorly.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 02:48:39 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 02:42:11 PM
That just means the regulatory fines are not high enough. In addition to facing an order to pay all outstanding overtime within a certain period of time, employers also face escalating fines for each breach of the legislation. Each employee not paid overtime is considered an independant breach and so the fines add up to the point where it quickly becomes unprofitable to breach the legislation.
This is America, man; every regulatory fine is never high enough, from labor and environmental standards to financial compliance and homeland security standards. Why spend more when cutting the check for regulatory fines is always easier?
My favorite pary is CCs assumption that these are billed hours that the company refuses to pay 1.5 for and not hours of untracked off the clock work.
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 20, 2014, 03:14:20 PM
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 09:27:50 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:24:38 AM
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
The best lie of the rich - convincing everybody that inflation is a bad thing. ;)
Inflation, the British cure to everything :wub:
In Germany it brought Hitler to power - that is why they hate it so much these days. In Britain it wiped out the 19th century's public debt, so no wonder you guys like it. ;)
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 03:22:23 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 20, 2014, 03:14:20 PM
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 09:27:50 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:24:38 AM
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
The best lie of the rich - convincing everybody that inflation is a bad thing. ;)
Inflation, the British cure to everything :wub:
In Germany it brought Hitler to power - that is why they hate it so much these days. In Britain it wiped out the 19th century's public debt, so no wonder you guys like it. ;)
Not just 19th century but 20th century too! It even cured gout :)
It didn't wipe out WWI debt because y'all defaulted on that. :)
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 03:27:19 PM
It didn't wipe out WWI debt because y'all defaulted on that. :)
It's not a default if everybody does it. ;)
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 03:27:19 PM
It didn't wipe out WWI debt because y'all defaulted on that. :)
No we didn't :)
Inflation, the cause of and solution to all life's problems.
Or was that beer? :hmm:
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 03:28:00 PM
It's not a default if everybody does it. ;)
Of course it is.
And Finland didn't. :contract:
There seem to be a lot more people worrying about employers ripping off employees regarding overtime than people worrying about employees ripping off employers by surfing the internet. :hmm:
Quote from: alfred russel on November 20, 2014, 04:03:23 PM
There seem to be a lot more people worrying about employers ripping off employees regarding overtime than people worrying about employees ripping off employers by surfing the internet. :hmm:
If it will make you feel better we could get someone to alert your employer. :P
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 04:38:20 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 20, 2014, 04:03:23 PM
There seem to be a lot more people worrying about employers ripping off employees regarding overtime than people worrying about employees ripping off employers by surfing the internet. :hmm:
If it will make you feel better we could get someone to alert your employer. :P
I'm sure my employer has someone assigned to monitoring my internet use. Luckily, she must be distracted by her own internet surfing. :)
Quote from: alfred russel on November 20, 2014, 04:03:23 PM
There seem to be a lot more people worrying about employers ripping off employees regarding overtime than people worrying about employees ripping off employers by surfing the internet. :hmm:
We can split the difference, and be paid overtime while surfing the 'net, right? :hmm:
Quote from: Malthus on November 20, 2014, 04:51:26 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 20, 2014, 04:03:23 PM
There seem to be a lot more people worrying about employers ripping off employees regarding overtime than people worrying about employees ripping off employers by surfing the internet. :hmm:
We can split the difference, and be paid overtime while surfing the 'net, right? :hmm:
Stop demanding overtime, there are plenty of people willing to surf the net for free.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 12:54:17 PM
Y'all do realize he's talking only about *salaried* employees, right? :unsure:
Just to amplify on this a bit for our non-US posters, but basically in the US salaried employees don't get paid OT. You only get OT if you're paid by the hour. However, employers can't just put everybody on salary to avoid OT. Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year. That's where the $23,660 a year figure in the article in the OP comes from. But that's figure is a bit misleading, because it does only apply to salaried employees. If you're paid by the hour, it doesn't matter how much you make, you're still subject to overtime requirements.
And the bit about "threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode" is just BS. Up until about 10 years ago, there was no threshold at all--if you were salaried, you could be paid $10,000 a year and still not be eligible for OT.
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 20, 2014, 03:14:20 PM
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 09:27:50 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:24:38 AM
Americans have been conditioned for over a century to hate all things red even at their own expense, Martim, so tossing around Das Kapital isn't going to work. The fact you are ignorant on that matter is the real novelty.
The best lie of the rich - convincing everybody that inflation is a bad thing. ;)
Inflation, the British cure to everything :wub:
Inflation, the best friend of common people's life savings :wub:
"Common people's life savings." :lol: Was the Second World an actual different planet?
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 06:31:54 PM
Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year.
:huh:
Also the common persons most valuable asset is usually real property, which appreciayes with inflation, whilst the debt used to finance its purchase is diminished.
Most common people don't keep reichsmarks in their mattress.
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 07:04:00 PM
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 06:31:54 PM
Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year.
:huh:
Yeah, I got no idea.
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 06:31:54 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2014, 12:54:17 PM
Y'all do realize he's talking only about *salaried* employees, right? :unsure:
Just to amplify on this a bit for our non-US posters, but basically in the US salaried employees don't get paid OT. You only get OT if you're paid by the hour. However, employers can't just put everybody on salary to avoid OT. Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year. That's where the $23,660 a year figure in the article in the OP comes from. But that's figure is a bit misleading, because it does only apply to salaried employees. If you're paid by the hour, it doesn't matter how much you make, you're still subject to overtime requirements.
And the bit about "threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode" is just BS. Up until about 10 years ago, there was no threshold at all--if you were salaried, you could be paid $10,000 a year and still not be eligible for OT.
I dont understand why there is a distinction in the US between salaried and hourly paid workers for the purposes of paying overtime. I doubt very much that all salaried employees are "management".
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 07:04:00 PM
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 06:31:54 PM
Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year.
:huh:
I said it was the short version. I didn't want to spend time going into all the details.
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 07:20:21 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 20, 2014, 07:04:00 PM
Quote from: dps on November 20, 2014, 06:31:54 PM
Short version, you have to be management to be salaried, and salaried employees have to be paid at least a certain amount per year.
:huh:
I said it was the short version. I didn't want to spend time going into all the details.
Well the detail you did give was wrong...
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:08:56 PM
I dont understand why there is a distinction in the US between salaried and hourly paid workers for the purposes of paying overtime.
What is the difference between salaried and full-time hourly employees then?
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 20, 2014, 07:22:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:08:56 PM
I dont understand why there is a distinction in the US between salaried and hourly paid workers for the purposes of paying overtime.
What is the difference between salaried and full-time hourly employees then?
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
If only you had some kind of tool available to.you to do research. Some kind of nexus of lexis as it were. :p
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 07:43:38 PM
If only you had some kind of tool available to.you to do research. Some kind of nexus of lexis as it were. :p
Would that explain to me why Americans have odd distinctions in their law?
I'd replace all of you with robots.
I'd replace you with a central allied mastercomputer. CHECKMATE.
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 08:42:41 PM
I'd replace you with a central allied mastercomputer. CHECKMATE.
colossus the forbin project
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 20, 2014, 07:22:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:08:56 PM
I dont understand why there is a distinction in the US between salaried and hourly paid workers for the purposes of paying overtime.
What is the difference between salaried and full-time hourly employees then?
How the employer classifies them.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
I think we have a fundamental disconnect here. If there is a statutory limit on how long your secretary works, why is she not hourly? The whole point of "salary" is that you get paid to produce an amount of work, not have your butt in a chair for X hours a week. Whether that amount of work requires 20 hours or 60 hours on your part is (theoretically) irrelevant.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 09:22:13 PM
How the employer classifies them.
No shit. :P I was trying to find out what the distinction is in Canuckistan.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
That would be nice. My lifetime income would be significantly higher today if ours worked like that. :P
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 20, 2014, 11:20:50 PM
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
And why? Because the employer says so. Easy.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PMExactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
It's not actually based on how you're paid, but people here tend to be stupid.
There's two basic ways you can be paid as far as the Fair Labor Standards Act is concerned: Hourly, or Salary. Hourly employees must be paid an agreed rate for every hour worked, there is a Federal minimum wage for this rate (tipped employees paid a reduced minimum), and they must be paid 1.5x that rate for every hour worked over 40 hours. There is no overtime for going over x number of hours per day, a lot of people choose to work four 10 hour days instead of five 8s, or their employers choose for them.
Within the salaried classification, there are two further classifications: exempt and non-exempt. If you are a non-exempt salaried employee, you must be paid overtime for hours worked over 40 per week. If you are exempt, you do not have to be paid overtime. However, to be classified as exempt requires two things:
1. Income over the $23k threshold
2. Performance of exempt job duties - this is a vaguely defined "high level duties", usually recognized as some form of managerial duty.
So for this reason you see the following situations:
1. Certain highly paid factory workers can earn $100,000+ per year (chemical plant operators are a good example), they are paid hourly, and typically work an average of 45-50 hours a week, so a good chunk of their pay is 1.5x overtime every single week. Train engineers are in the same boat pay wise.
2. Certain very low paid persons who are still "managers" can be paid no overtime. For example a Taco Bell manager might earn $40k a year and work 70 hours a week and he'll never see a dime of overtime.
3. A lot of office drones are salaried but are non-exempt. For example when I started at the Federal Government after leaving the Army, I was just a drone, if I worked over 40 per week they had to pay me overtime. I was a salaried employee, but I was non-exempt because my duties were not "high level or managerial" type tasks. Now that I'm a manager, I'm not paid overtime. I'm probably not a good example, a law firm secretary is a better one. (I'm not a good example because laws governing most workers often do not actually apply to Federal employees anyway, although they often choose to implement them for us regardless.) Here in the U.S. your secretaries would be in the same boat, salaried but non-exempt, you'd have to pay them overtime.
Why was it set up this way? Historically being a salaried manager was something that only people in upper income brackets were, and also this was an class in opposition to labor. Since the FLSA was promulgated on the backs of labor movements it's not surprising it doesn't protect the management class. No one would have thought they'd needed this protection because no one imagined a dude barely scraping by managing a Burger King would fall under these rules, but today they do.
Additionally salaried used to mean something a lot different in the United States. It used to be if you were on salary you basically had an entitlement to your pay, regardless of whether you worked or not. You were paid for
what you did, not how much you worked. If you got your job done in 10 hours a week and no one saw you otherwise, then you'd still be expected to be paid. Now since most salarymen traditionally were managerial, it'd be hard to have done the job in 10 hours a week. But slowly that eroded. These days you can be salaried, which still means in theory your employer has to pay you
regardless of whether you work the hours or not, but now they are allowed to "require" you to take paid time off if you miss a day.
So in the past if a salaryman manager took a day off, oh well. As long as the employer didn't consider it a disciplinary action/firing grounds, he'd be paid, he wouldn't lose any "vacation" (salarymen didn't have banked PTO, they instead could just arrange vacations as often or as little as they wanted.) But now if you don't work a day and you're salaried, your employer is allowed to use PTO balances for those days, and they are also even allowed to deduct days worth of pay based on you not working those days. The only lingering protections of being salaried is the law actually does say that if you work even a moment in a day, you must be paid for the full day if you're salary. But if you miss a whole day, they can dock you a whole day's pay. If you work 1 minute a day, they have to pay you, but they're allowed to force you to spend down PTO balances to cover the difference in those scenarios (so you'd only be getting paid free time if you did this for long enough to exhaust PTO.)
Also in addition to all the rules above, millions of employees are misclassified against all readings of Federal law as exempt when they are simply, legally, supposed to be non-exempt. No one goes around checking this stuff. The W&H people only investigate if a claim is made, and they usually take a century or so to resolve an investigation.
In addition to all this, these rules also only apply to "employees." Lots of people who work under contract are not actually employees and receive none of the protections of these laws.
Also State laws vary, some States actually mandate overtime for going over the "8 hour workday", but Federally there's a 40 hour work week that's enforced and not an 8 hour work day.
Also, in many of the States that have strict 8 hour days, if you have a "regularly scheduled" work week of four 10 hour days, your employer can exempt you from overtime. But if your regular schedule isn't 10 hours a day and you go over, they aren't supposed to let you "adjust" later on. (Meaning if you for some reason stay 2 hours late, they aren't supposed to then reduce your next day by two 2 hours but are instead required to pay 2 hours of OT--but the State laws tend to be even more Byzantine than the Federal in this regard.)
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 07:06:03 PM
Also the common persons most valuable asset is usually real property, which appreciayes with inflation, whilst the debt used to finance its purchase is diminished.
Most common people don't keep reichsmarks in their mattress.
Yeah. I would say that inflation hits not the common people, but the upper middle class/lower upper class the hardest. It is a form of wealth distribution from them to the "common people" (through government spending of the money it prints/public debt it devalues).
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2014, 12:04:51 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PMExactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
It's not actually based on how you're paid, but people here tend to be stupid.
There's two basic ways you can be paid as far as the Fair Labor Standards Act is concerned: Hourly, or Salary. Hourly employees must be paid an agreed rate for every hour worked, there is a Federal minimum wage for this rate (tipped employees paid a reduced minimum), and they must be paid 1.5x that rate for every hour worked over 40 hours. There is no overtime for going over x number of hours per day, a lot of people choose to work four 10 hour days instead of five 8s, or their employers choose for them.
Within the salaried classification, there are two further classifications: exempt and non-exempt. If you are a non-exempt salaried employee, you must be paid overtime for hours worked over 40 per week. If you are exempt, you do not have to be paid overtime. However, to be classified as exempt requires two things:
1. Income over the $23k threshold
2. Performance of exempt job duties - this is a vaguely defined "high level duties", usually recognized as some form of managerial duty.
So for this reason you see the following situations:
1. Certain highly paid factory workers can earn $100,000+ per year (chemical plant operators are a good example), they are paid hourly, and typically work an average of 45-50 hours a week, so a good chunk of their pay is 1.5x overtime every single week. Train engineers are in the same boat pay wise.
2. Certain very low paid persons who are still "managers" can be paid no overtime. For example a Taco Bell manager might earn $40k a year and work 70 hours a week and he'll never see a dime of overtime.
3. A lot of office drones are salaried but are non-exempt. For example when I started at the Federal Government after leaving the Army, I was just a drone, if I worked over 40 per week they had to pay me overtime. I was a salaried employee, but I was non-exempt because my duties were not "high level or managerial" type tasks. Now that I'm a manager, I'm not paid overtime. I'm probably not a good example, a law firm secretary is a better one. (I'm not a good example because laws governing most workers often do not actually apply to Federal employees anyway, although they often choose to implement them for us regardless.) Here in the U.S. your secretaries would be in the same boat, salaried but non-exempt, you'd have to pay them overtime.
Why was it set up this way? Historically being a salaried manager was something that only people in upper income brackets were, and also this was an class in opposition to labor. Since the FLSA was promulgated on the backs of labor movements it's not surprising it doesn't protect the management class. No one would have thought they'd needed this protection because no one imagined a dude barely scraping by managing a Burger King would fall under these rules, but today they do.
Additionally salaried used to mean something a lot different in the United States. It used to be if you were on salary you basically had an entitlement to your pay, regardless of whether you worked or not. You were paid for what you did, not how much you worked. If you got your job done in 10 hours a week and no one saw you otherwise, then you'd still be expected to be paid. Now since most salarymen traditionally were managerial, it'd be hard to have done the job in 10 hours a week. But slowly that eroded. These days you can be salaried, which still means in theory your employer has to pay you regardless of whether you work the hours or not, but now they are allowed to "require" you to take paid time off if you miss a day.
So in the past if a salaryman manager took a day off, oh well. As long as the employer didn't consider it a disciplinary action/firing grounds, he'd be paid, he wouldn't lose any "vacation" (salarymen didn't have banked PTO, they instead could just arrange vacations as often or as little as they wanted.) But now if you don't work a day and you're salaried, your employer is allowed to use PTO balances for those days, and they are also even allowed to deduct days worth of pay based on you not working those days. The only lingering protections of being salaried is the law actually does say that if you work even a moment in a day, you must be paid for the full day if you're salary. But if you miss a whole day, they can dock you a whole day's pay. If you work 1 minute a day, they have to pay you, but they're allowed to force you to spend down PTO balances to cover the difference in those scenarios (so you'd only be getting paid free time if you did this for long enough to exhaust PTO.)
Also in addition to all the rules above, millions of employees are misclassified against all readings of Federal law as exempt when they are simply, legally, supposed to be non-exempt. No one goes around checking this stuff. The W&H people only investigate if a claim is made, and they usually take a century or so to resolve an investigation.
In addition to all this, these rules also only apply to "employees." Lots of people who work under contract are not actually employees and receive none of the protections of these laws.
See why I didn't want to go into detail? OvB still didn't touch on all the twists and turns of this stuff.
A friend of a friend said that at her place of work the company took a vote to see if the employees wanted to be treated as exempt or non-exempt. So apparently there is a little fudge in there.
What's the benefit of being exempt?
Pride, I guess. "Oooh, we're management."
Not having to have the time clock hassle is a benefit.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 01:09:44 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 07:06:03 PM
Also the common persons most valuable asset is usually real property, which appreciayes with inflation, whilst the debt used to finance its purchase is diminished.
Most common people don't keep reichsmarks in their mattress.
Yeah. I would say that inflation hits not the common people, but the upper middle class/lower upper class the hardest. It is a form of wealth distribution from them to the "common people" (through government spending of the money it prints/public debt it devalues).
We are lucky we have governments to take care of our wealth and redistribute it for us.
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2014, 04:00:43 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 01:09:44 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on November 20, 2014, 07:06:03 PM
Also the common persons most valuable asset is usually real property, which appreciayes with inflation, whilst the debt used to finance its purchase is diminished.
Most common people don't keep reichsmarks in their mattress.
Yeah. I would say that inflation hits not the common people, but the upper middle class/lower upper class the hardest. It is a form of wealth distribution from them to the "common people" (through government spending of the money it prints/public debt it devalues).
We are lucky we have governments to take care of our wealth and redistribute it for us.
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
It's not about "being lucky". It's a matter of policy (which, incidentally, is about different things mainly, with the redistributory factor being largely a side effect).
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2014, 11:22:31 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 20, 2014, 10:57:18 AM
BTW on wealth accumulation, is wealth accumulated due to stocks held rising in value being counted in that? If yes, how big a portion that is? Because that's not "real" wealth.
That is not really true. Sure, you have speculative bubbles now and then (which, by the way, still accumulate significant wealth for speculators who manage to sell at the right time), but at least in theory the difference between the net asset value of a company and the overall capitalisation represents goodwill which may not be tangible, but can still be a substantial representation of wealth (and in fact for a company like Apple or Google is most of their wealth).
Following up a bit more on this point, I think the "stocks are not 'real' wealth" point is really naive. The wealth they represent is that of a fair market value of the company. Sure, it can be volatile and is suspectible to bubbles, but other than the risk involved how is it different from the wealth represented by commodities, land, buildings or even hard cash? After all, all of them can have their fair market value increase or decrease rapidly over short periods of time - anyone who owned large stockpiles of oil at the beginning of 2014, or had large investments in residential real estate in 2008 can attest that can be as volatile as stocks. And money is subject to inflation or depreciation against foreign currencies just as well.
In fact, I would say that an increase of a price of shares in a company that does well, makes profits and benefits from the labour of its employees represents a wealth accumulation that is much more "real" than an increase of a price of an undeveloped land simply in response to a market bubble.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
And between generations which, as a generational jihadi, isn't always a bad thing.
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2014, 07:24:18 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
And between generations which, as a generational jihadi, isn't always a bad thing.
I agree. From the overall point of view, it is much better to have a society where people want to get rich from what they accomplish than from what they inherit.
Quote from: dps on November 21, 2014, 01:26:47 AM
See why I didn't want to go into detail? OvB still didn't touch on all the twists and turns of this stuff.
It still doesn't explain why you decided to shorthand to something that wasn't even remotely true.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 21, 2014, 02:04:33 AM
What's the benefit of being exempt?
I can come and go as I please and nobody gives a shit. Of course, the flip side to that benefit is tons of off-hours work, so I'm not sure how much of a benefit it really is. :hmm:
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 20, 2014, 11:20:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
That would be nice. My lifetime income would be significantly higher today if ours worked like that. :P
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
Yeah, but what I am trying to understand is why an employer can exempt an employee simply by using the magic word "salary". As I said before, it makes a great deal of sense to exempt employees based on their function. But simply allowing an employer to waive a magic wand and pronounce an employee "salaried" and therefore not entitled to overtime makes no sense.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:13:46 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 20, 2014, 11:20:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
That would be nice. My lifetime income would be significantly higher today if ours worked like that. :P
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
Yeah, but what I am trying to understand is why an employer can exempt an employee simply by using the magic word "salary". As I said before, it makes a great deal of sense to exempt employees based on their function. But simply allowing an employer to waive a magic wand and pronounce an employee "salaried" and therefore not entitled to overtime makes no sense.
Well as OvB noted, yeah that likely makes no sense as that isn't what the regulations are. :D
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 07:45:22 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2014, 07:24:18 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
And between generations which, as a generational jihadi, isn't always a bad thing.
I agree. From the overall point of view, it is much better to have a society where people want to get rich from what they accomplish than from what they inherit.
Progressive income tax disagrees with you. :mad:
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2014, 12:04:51 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PMExactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
It's not actually based on how you're paid, but people here tend to be stupid.
There's two basic ways you can be paid as far as the Fair Labor Standards Act is concerned: Hourly, or Salary. Hourly employees must be paid an agreed rate for every hour worked, there is a Federal minimum wage for this rate (tipped employees paid a reduced minimum), and they must be paid 1.5x that rate for every hour worked over 40 hours. There is no overtime for going over x number of hours per day, a lot of people choose to work four 10 hour days instead of five 8s, or their employers choose for them.
Within the salaried classification, there are two further classifications: exempt and non-exempt. If you are a non-exempt salaried employee, you must be paid overtime for hours worked over 40 per week. If you are exempt, you do not have to be paid overtime. However, to be classified as exempt requires two things:
1. Income over the $23k threshold
2. Performance of exempt job duties - this is a vaguely defined "high level duties", usually recognized as some form of managerial duty.
Ah ok, I thought what the other posters had said didnt make sense. This does and it is roughly how we do it. Except that for non exempt employees we have limits for both daily and weekly hours.
Thanks. :)
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/07/18/salaried-workers-do-you-get-paid-for-overtime-odds-are-you-sho/
QuoteSpecific jobs excluded: movie theater employees, live-in domestic employees, farmworkers on small farms, railroad employees (you're covered by the Railway Labor Act) and truck drivers, loaders, helpers and mechanics (covered under the Motor Carriers Act), computer professionals making at least $27.63/hour, commissioned sales employees who average at least 1.5 times minimum wage/hour, auto dealer salespeople, mechanics and parts-people, and seasonal and recreational workers. There are others who are exempt from all or part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, listed here.
Salaried employees: If you make less than $23,600 ($455/week) you're never exempt. If your employer cuts your pay if you miss part of the work day, you're not exempt. But they can deduct paid time off from your leave bank or PTO if you miss work. You can't have your salary reduced if there is no work or if work is slow. You can be docked for missed full days due to disciplinary suspension, sick days, or personal leave. But even if you're salaried, you're still not exempt from overtime unless you also have exempt job duties.
Executive duties: If you're salaried and they don't take improper deductions, then you're exempt if you supervise two or more employees, if management is your primary job, and if you have genuine input into the hiring, promotion and firing of your subordinates.
Learned professions: This exemption includes doctors, lawyers (not paralegals), dentists, teachers, architects, clergy, RNs (not LPNs), engineers, actuaries, scientists (not technicians), pharmacists, and other learned professions (usually requires an advanced degree).
Creative employees: Creative employees who are exempt include actors, musicians, composers, writers, cartoonists, and some journalists. People in this category don't necessarily have to be paid on a salary basis to be exempt.
Administrative duties: If you perform office or non-manual work that's directly related to management or the general business operations of your company or their customers, and you are regularly required to use your independent judgment and discretion about significant matters, then you might be exempt. An administrative assistant who is the CEO's right hand is probably exempt, but the secretary to a mid-level manager probably isn't.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:13:46 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 20, 2014, 11:20:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
That would be nice. My lifetime income would be significantly higher today if ours worked like that. :P
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
Yeah, but what I am trying to understand is why an employer can exempt an employee simply by using the magic word "salary". As I said before, it makes a great deal of sense to exempt employees based on their function. But simply allowing an employer to waive a magic wand and pronounce an employee "salaried" and therefore not entitled to overtime makes no sense.
I think the point they are making is that in many jobs there is enough gray area so that it is feasible to qualify a job as one that either does or does not benefit from overtime regulations, depending on creative interpretation.
In Poland you have a relatively similar situation. You can work as an employee - in which case you are subject to a higher tax, pay higher social security, but enjoy better job protections (including overtime) - or you can work as an independent contractor - in which case you pay a flat tax, much smaller social security but do not enjoy job protections.
Technically, from the legal perspective, these two are mutually exclusive and, based on the nature of your duties, you can be either an employee or a consultant, but not both. For example (and I am oversimplifying this for the sake of argument), an employee is someone who works "from 9 to 5", has a specific scope of duties, works under supervision etc., whereas a consultant is someone who does not have set hours of work, is more independent etc.
In practice, there are many jobs (for example, lawyers) that can be easily qualified as either depending on how you draft their contract. For example, I work as an independent contractor, but a colleague three rooms from me is an employee, and our duties are pretty much identical (I prefer more flexibility because it allows me to pay a 19% flat tax; she may consider getting pregnant in near future, so she prefers an employee status, even though she earns less net as a result).
I suspect, all local differences aside, a situation in the US may be similar.
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2014, 10:16:02 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 07:45:22 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2014, 07:24:18 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
And between generations which, as a generational jihadi, isn't always a bad thing.
I agree. From the overall point of view, it is much better to have a society where people want to get rich from what they accomplish than from what they inherit.
Progressive income tax disagrees with you. :mad:
Not really. Although I would support higher estate tax, to tell you the truth.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
I suspect the employer has more flexibility with limiting the hours (and thus, the pay) of the former on an ad hoc basis. I also assume a full-time hourly employee has no paid holiday.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
There really is none, at least for full time employees.
Part of the problem is that in common usage people have come to assume that a salaried worker is a manager. You can see that mistake being made in this thread by some. But, of course, that is not necessarily so. The misconception is buttressed by the fact that a managerial employee would never be paid by the hour (unless the employer decideds to do so against their own interest) because a manager would be exempt from hours of work regulations.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:27:49 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
I also assume a full-time hourly employee has no paid holiday.
Certainly not here.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:35:33 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:27:49 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
I also assume a full-time hourly employee has no paid holiday.
Certainly not here.
How would an employee paid by an hour have paid holiday? :huh:
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:13:46 AM
Yeah, but what I am trying to understand is why an employer can exempt an employee simply by using the magic word "salary". As I said before, it makes a great deal of sense to exempt employees based on their function. But simply allowing an employer to waive a magic wand and pronounce an employee "salaried" and therefore not entitled to overtime makes no sense.
You're a sharp guy, CC, so I'm sure you can understand the concept of "just because." These decisions are made when the position is created.
"We need a new position, Evil HR Director, and I don't want to pay overtime."
"Done and done!"
See?
Yeah. There is a reason why corporations pay a lot of money to employment law lawyers. :P
It's like asking how corporations can structure their investments in a way that they do not have to pay any taxes.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:36:30 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:35:33 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:27:49 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
I also assume a full-time hourly employee has no paid holiday.
Certainly not here.
How would an employee paid by an hour have paid holiday? :huh:
:unsure:
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:36:30 AM
How would an employee paid by an hour have paid holiday? :huh:
Pro-rate their pay :mellow:
In my experience if you're paid by the hour you either get paid holiday or a higher wage so the holiday pay is 'inclusive'
I guess I'm with CC and don't see the difference between full time by the hour and salaried employee then. :P
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:34:51 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
There really is none, at least for full time employees.
Part of the problem is that in common usage people have come to assume that a salaried worker is a manager. You can see that mistake being made in this thread by some. But, of course, that is not necessarily so. The misconception is buttressed by the fact that a managerial employee would never be paid by the hour (unless the employer decideds to do so against their own interest) because a manager would be exempt from hours of work regulations.
Hourly employees are usually--but not always--a result of shift work. Even a non-managerial 40-hour M-F day-only employee winds up being salaried, if only because there's no need to compute things like hour rates for holidays worked, shift differentials and the like.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:36:30 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:35:33 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:27:49 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
I also assume a full-time hourly employee has no paid holiday.
Certainly not here.
How would an employee paid by an hour have paid holiday? :huh:
I dont understand the issue you are having. The statute requires that all employees be provided x amount of vacation pay annually. X is calculated as a percentage of annual income. Typically either 4% or 6% depending on years of service.
In the case of an hourly employee who doesnt work full time the calculation is made on the basis of part time hours. But that is the same as a salaried worker who works part time.
The only really tricky cases involve employees paid on commission. But that isnt relevant to our present discussion.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:44:05 AM
I guess I'm with CC and don't see the difference between full time by the hour and salaried employee then. :P
Full-time hourly = we're not going to allow you to work overtime.
Full-time salaried = we're not going to pay you any overtime, ever.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2014, 10:47:25 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:34:51 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 21, 2014, 10:24:25 AM
I'm still confused as to the difference between a full-time hourly employee and a non-exempt salaried employee.
There really is none, at least for full time employees.
Part of the problem is that in common usage people have come to assume that a salaried worker is a manager. You can see that mistake being made in this thread by some. But, of course, that is not necessarily so. The misconception is buttressed by the fact that a managerial employee would never be paid by the hour (unless the employer decideds to do so against their own interest) because a manager would be exempt from hours of work regulations.
Hourly employees are usually--but not always--a result of shift work. Even a non-managerial 40-hour M-F day-only employee winds up being salaried, if only because there's no need to compute things like hour rates for holidays worked, shift differentials and the like.
Yeah, exactly :)
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2014, 10:50:10 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:44:05 AM
I guess I'm with CC and don't see the difference between full time by the hour and salaried employee then. :P
Full-time hourly = we're not going to allow you to work overtime.
Full-time salaried = we're not going to pay you any overtime, ever.
Not quite. Now that the issue has been clarified the circumstance in the US is similar to Canada in that being salaried doesnt decide the issue. The question is whether the position is exempt from the requirement to pay overtime (normally because it is in the nature of a management position but there are other exemptions).
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:52:17 AM
Not quite.
You should know me better than that by now. Leave me to my terse and sweeping flippancy, dammit.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2014, 10:59:58 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:52:17 AM
Not quite.
You should know me better than that by now. Leave me to my terse and sweeping flippancy, dammit.
I think there is still hope that you will...evolve past your current style.
:lol: There was a big article somewhere not too long ago how modern states are being buried under complicated laws and regulations. You can see it in practice in this thread.
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2014, 11:09:12 AM
:lol: There was a big article somewhere not too long ago how modern states are being buried under complicated laws and regulations. You can see it in practice in this thread.
This thread is a good example of words being given meaning that is not accurate. ie salaried does not equal management. Once that is clarified the rest is pretty straight forward.
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:52:17 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2014, 10:50:10 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:44:05 AM
I guess I'm with CC and don't see the difference between full time by the hour and salaried employee then. :P
Full-time hourly = we're not going to allow you to work overtime.
Full-time salaried = we're not going to pay you any overtime, ever.
Not quite. Now that the issue has been clarified the circumstance in the US is similar to Canada in that being salaried doesnt decide the issue. The question is whether the position is exempt from the requirement to pay overtime (normally because it is in the nature of a management position but there are other exemptions).
What about my position?
I am salaried but I accrue overtime hours. They never get pay out, they accumulate into vacation time.
Is hat artificial & not from a statute?
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 21, 2014, 11:17:22 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:52:17 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2014, 10:50:10 AM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:44:05 AM
I guess I'm with CC and don't see the difference between full time by the hour and salaried employee then. :P
Full-time hourly = we're not going to allow you to work overtime.
Full-time salaried = we're not going to pay you any overtime, ever.
Not quite. Now that the issue has been clarified the circumstance in the US is similar to Canada in that being salaried doesnt decide the issue. The question is whether the position is exempt from the requirement to pay overtime (normally because it is in the nature of a management position but there are other exemptions).
What about my position?
I am salaried but I accrue overtime hours. They never get pay out, they accumulate into vacation time.
Is hat artificial & not from a statute?
Not sure what the law is in Quebec. In most provinces overtime hours can be converted into additional paid vacation time.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
I don't see how you got this.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 01:29:31 PM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
I don't see how you got this.
I am not sure about redistribution but it does help to reduce income inequality.
Marty is maybe mistaking wealth for money?
High inflation concentrates money in higher proportion to the rich, so maybe I'm guessing wrong.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
Read further into Picketty, starting on page 452.
Conclusion: "even though the effect of inflation are complex and multidimensional, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the redistribution induced by inflation is mainly to the detriment of least wealthy and to the benefit of the wealthiest . . ."
Joan, I haven't had time to jump into reading Piketty like I want to. I'll probably be reading him soon. Does he elaborate on what his conclusions about why inflation has those causes?
My own reading has always leaned towards (and this is simplifying, obviously) the wealthiest having "first-access" to the newly-minted/inflated currency, leading to a sort of perverse trickle-down in which those with first-access are able to use inflated currency to purchase goods at the old, pre-inflation prices. Those at the bottom of the pecking order (IE, wage-earners) are typically the last to receive any benefit, assuming there's any at all left by that time.
Piketty's argument is that the rich are in a better position to insure their portfolios against inflation risks (or indeed other kinds of risks).
More broadly, if inflation is anticipated it should really have no effect, except on those who for whatever reason are powerless to take steps to protect themselves or are so lacking in information they don't know what is coming. That is more likely to be the poor in both cases. If inflation is unanticipated then the winners (relatively) will be those who either insured their portfolios against the risk (as per Piketty) or just happened to have more assets in inflation friendly investments, like real estate, commodities, alternative investment funds, etc., which TP also argues favors the rich.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2014, 02:26:58 PM
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 06:02:15 AM
If you keep inflation artifically low (or allow it to go into deflation), you are redistributing wealth from providers of labor to holders of capital - high inflation does the opposite.
Read further into Picketty, starting on page 452.
Conclusion: "even though the effect of inflation are complex and multidimensional, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the redistribution induced by inflation is mainly to the detriment of least wealthy and to the benefit of the wealthiest . . ."
Well, I said before that inflation hurts the upper middle class/lower upper class the most, so this is consistent. The rich always get away. ;)
How is that consistent at all? The "upper middle class/lower upper class" are not "the least wealthy."
Ok. Guess I need to read more Picketty. :P
Legally there's almost no difference between salaried non-exempt and hourly, there are typically practical differences, namely:
1. Salaried employees almost always work a fixed schedule, and can usually come in late or leave early as long as they still hit their appropriate work time. Even if they don't, no one really cares if you're a little off. Hourly employees you're often paid to the minute or the quarter hour of when you clock in, and clocking in even a minute late can really get you in trouble in some settings.
2. Hourly employees usually do not work a fixed schedule, and their shifts often change over time. In some industries they do not even know if they will get 40 hours of work for the week until the schedule is posted, and often times they won't. Most salaried non-exempt people pretty much know they're working 40 hours every single week.
3. There are a decent amount of laws (including PPACA) and many State laws that treat hourly employees differently based on how many hours they regularly work.
4. Hourly employees can sometimes get something called "low earnings unemployment" if they are scheduled for less than their normal hours in a given week.
But all of these are mostly "in practice" differences, there's nothing stopping an employer from busting the balls of a salaried non-exempt employee for coming in ten minutes late. Additionally there is nothing stopping an employer from requiring a salaried non-exempt employee to rigorously track their time.
Quote from: Martinus on November 21, 2014, 10:23:19 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2014, 10:13:46 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 20, 2014, 11:20:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2014, 07:31:21 PM
Exactly. I am not sure what that has to do with a statutory limit on hours worked in a day before overtime is earned.
I understand why certain types of employees should be exempted from overtime requirements. But disentitlement to overtime simply by the method used to calculate pay seems arbitrary. To use an example, all our secretarial staff are paid salaries. But if they work more than the statutory limit on any given day they also earn overtime. That just seems fair.
That would be nice. My lifetime income would be significantly higher today if ours worked like that. :P
The technical term for salaried employees is "exempt". Meaning exempt from overtime rules.
Yeah, but what I am trying to understand is why an employer can exempt an employee simply by using the magic word "salary". As I said before, it makes a great deal of sense to exempt employees based on their function. But simply allowing an employer to waive a magic wand and pronounce an employee "salaried" and therefore not entitled to overtime makes no sense.
I think the point they are making is that in many jobs there is enough gray area so that it is feasible to qualify a job as one that either does or does not benefit from overtime regulations, depending on creative interpretation.
Yes, this is the point Seedy and I have been trying to make. Technically, yeah, the magic word isn't "salaried" or "manager", it's "exempt", but in common usage, they've come to mean mostly the same thing. (There are a few jobs that pay "exempt" employees by the hour, but for the most part, why would you want to do that? If you have an exempt employee that you are paying $100/hr. on the assumption that they're working a 40 hour week, if they work 44 hours in a given week, yes, you wouldn't have to pay them time-and-a-half ($150) for the extra 4 hours, but you would still have to pay them an extra $400 that week. Why not just make them salaried at $4000/wk. and be done with it).
Anyway, the problem is that people get classified as exempt who really shouldn't be, based on what they actually
do on the job, as opposed to their formal job duties. Seedy mentioned fast food managers somewhere back up the thread. That's a really good example, because in a lot of fast food places, managers are classified as exempt and put on salary. If you read what their job duties are, well, yeah, it sounds like they're spending their time doing things that would allow them to be classified as exempt, but in practice, they aren't managing the store--they're just filling in doing the things that non-exempt crew members should do--unloading the supply trucks, making sandwiches, running the drive-thru cash register, etc. (One side affect of this is that a lot of fast food places are not at all well-run. There's nobody actually managing the place, because the managers are too tied up performing mundane crew functions).
Yeah, my example about a fast food manager making $40k/yr and working 70 hours a week isn't really an exaggeration, either. Other than the salary actually might be more like $30k/yrfor some of the chains, some do pay managers higher (in the $50s), the BLS average for "food service managers" is $47k, but that includes traditional restaurants and such which generally pay GMs more. Like dps says, a lot of fast food managers spend maybe five hours a week: making schedules, dealing with employee hiring/firing, taking inventory, placing product orders, the rest of their shift they're just working a ton of hours doing basically every job in the store because they tend to be one of a small number (sometimes only) employee on premise that is fully trained at every single thing that needs done in the restaurant. They're often there hours before open thoroughly cleaning and prepping and often work long after closing to get the store ready for the next day.
They're to me probably the clearest example of people really fucked over by the whole salaried/exempt/non-exempt classification scheme.
They do get minions though. Many high-earners aren't so lucky.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2014, 10:12:01 AM
Yeah, my example about a fast food manager making $40k/yr and working 70 hours a week isn't really an exaggeration, either. Other than the salary actually might be more like $30k/yrfor some of the chains, some do pay managers higher (in the $50s), the BLS average for "food service managers" is $47k, but that includes traditional restaurants and such which generally pay GMs more. Like dps says, a lot of fast food managers spend maybe five hours a week: making schedules, dealing with employee hiring/firing, taking inventory, placing product orders, the rest of their shift they're just working a ton of hours doing basically every job in the store because they tend to be one of a small number (sometimes only) employee on premise that is fully trained at every single thing that needs done in the restaurant. They're often there hours before open thoroughly cleaning and prepping and often work long after closing to get the store ready for the next day.
They're to me probably the clearest example of people really fucked over by the whole salaried/exempt/non-exempt classification scheme.
But the "scheme" itself isn't the problem. The problem is that there's essentially no system in place to ensure that people in positions classified as exempt are actually meeting the requirements to be exempt.
OTOH, not paying employees classified as non-exempt for OT due them is actually pretty rare, as far as I can tell. I'm sure it does happen, but I don't think it's very common.
Quote from: dps on November 22, 2014, 01:38:48 AM
Yes, this is the point Seedy and I have been trying to make. Technically, yeah, the magic word isn't "salaried" or "manager", it's "exempt", but in common usage, they've come to mean mostly the same thing. (There are a few jobs that pay "exempt" employees by the hour, but for the most part, why would you want to do that? If you have an exempt employee that you are paying $100/hr. on the assumption that they're working a 40 hour week, if they work 44 hours in a given week, yes, you wouldn't have to pay them time-and-a-half ($150) for the extra 4 hours, but you would still have to pay them an extra $400 that week. Why not just make them salaried at $4000/wk. and be done with it).
To add the weirdness, I am currently salaried and exempt. However, I get paid for every hour I can bill to a contract. That is an artifact of federal government contracts, though: if we bill the contract, whomever billed the hour must be paid for it. If I were working overtime for free I am ultimately giving the government that time for free, because my employer is not being paid for that either.
Raytheon did not work that way, but they were notorious for underbidding contracts. The type of contracts we get tend to be fixed-price, take-it-or-leave-it deals.
Dude, Nick Hanauer is that communist dude featured in that commie documentary by that short dude that was secretary of labor under Prezzy rapist Clinton.
Robert Reich.
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 02:16:39 AM
Dude, Nick Hanauer is that communist dude featured in that commie documentary by that short dude that was secretary of labor under Prezzy rapist Clinton.
Rapist? :unsure:
Juanita Broaddrick accused him. In Siege's mind the accusation is enough when it comes to Democratic politicians. :ph34r:
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
And if I were in the Army, and disobeyed a direct order from my superior, I'd be put in gaol. Yet that probably wouldn't happen if I disobeyed a direct order from my project manager. I wonder why that is?
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 12:01:57 PM
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
Look, just because the President of Israel rapes people doesn't mean that's standard.
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 12:01:57 PM
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
Meh, UCMJ actions are often pretty lax. "Unprofessional relationship" charge at best, as Monica was a consensual relationship. For an officer, maybe "conduct unbecoming". If it even went that far.
Nothing to contribute but I love my overtime.
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 23, 2014, 03:19:09 PM
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 12:01:57 PM
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
Meh, UCMJ actions are often pretty lax. "Unprofessional relationship" charge at best, as Monica was a consensual relationship. For an officer, maybe "conduct unbecoming". If it even went that far.
Are you fucking kidding me?
In today's army you get kicked out by the SUSPICTION of sexual assault.
Ever heard of the SHARP program?
Sexual Harassment/Assault Response Program?
Believe me, this aint no fucking joke.
You can fuck you 20 years military carear by making a comment in front of females.
So, does it have to be a sexual assault first, or does it become a sexual assault on the basis of the power relationship inherent in the military hierarchy? Or does the UCMJ simply provide a rebuttable presumption of sexual assault regarding such a relationship?
Next time on JAG, I guess, we can all learn some more about a body of law that affects us in not the least way.
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 05:45:59 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 23, 2014, 03:19:09 PM
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 12:01:57 PM
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
Meh, UCMJ actions are often pretty lax. "Unprofessional relationship" charge at best, as Monica was a consensual relationship. For an officer, maybe "conduct unbecoming". If it even went that far.
Are you fucking kidding me?
In today's army you get kicked out by the SUSPICTION of sexual assault.
Ever heard of the SHARP program?
Sexual Harassment/Assault Response Program?
Believe me, this aint no fucking joke.
You can fuck you 20 years military carear by making a comment in front of females.
Sure, if you're enlisted. Officers get cut a lot more slack.
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 23, 2014, 07:35:39 PM
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 05:45:59 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 23, 2014, 03:19:09 PM
Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2014, 12:01:57 PM
Why is this controversial?
Rape is when a man in a position of power gets a female to service him.
Not all rape involve direct physical violence.
If Clinton had been in the military, this thing with Monica Who? would have been definitively a rape and landed him in jail with a dishonorable discharge.
Meh, UCMJ actions are often pretty lax. "Unprofessional relationship" charge at best, as Monica was a consensual relationship. For an officer, maybe "conduct unbecoming". If it even went that far.
Are you fucking kidding me?
In today's army you get kicked out by the SUSPICTION of sexual assault.
Ever heard of the SHARP program?
Sexual Harassment/Assault Response Program?
Believe me, this aint no fucking joke.
You can fuck you 20 years military carear by making a comment in front of females.
Sure, if you're enlisted. Officers get cut a lot more slack.
Not anymore.
Believe me, this is 0bama's army.
Any little griviance and you are out, with no benefits.
Overtime is back!
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/obama-raise-overtime-pay-nearly-5-million-workers-n384186
QuoteObama to Expand Overtime Pay to Nearly 5 Million Workers
by KRISTIN DONNELLY
President Obama will announce a sweeping change to the nation's overtime pay law, dramatically expanding the number of people who will qualify for increased pay after working more than 40 hours in a week.
The proposed rule, first reported by Politico, will raise the threshold for guaranteed overtime pay from a salary of $23,660 to $50,440. The long-awaited rule change aims to improve wages for nearly 5 million people as early as 2016.
Obama said in a Huffington Post piece that the change would be good for workers and for businesses that are already paying workers fairly and being undercut by companies that don't.
"That's how America should do business. In this country, a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay," Obama wrote. "That's at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America."
Obama will formally announce the rule change on a trip to Wisconsin, a battleground state home to fierce labor battles and likely GOP presidential candidate Gov. Scott Walker.
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Administration officials are expected to begin releasing details about the plan on Tuesday.
The National Retail Federation has opposed proposed overtime changes, saying they would "add to employers' costs, undermine customer service, hinder productivity, generate more litigation opportunities for trial lawyers and ultimately harm job creation."
Neat. Doesn't affect me.