Flexing your time into the toilet
May 20, 2003
I'm not sure how I found this, but at a clever sheep is a posting that deserves some thought. (0000P1)
We need flexibility... to screw ourselves: (0000P2)
This one snuck under the radar, while we were being barraged by war news: In an article entitled "Fleecing The Family", Molly Ivins reports on a pair of bills making their way through Congress which, in the guise of providing flexibility in working hours to employees, actually serve to undermine many of the goals of the New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act. The Senate bill (S.317), entitled The Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act and the House bill (H.1119), entitled the Family Time Flexibility Act, amend the law requiring employers to pay time-and-a-half for hourly workers who work more than 40 hours in a given week. (0000P3)
Instead of paying for the extra hours the employer, with the "voluntary" permission of the employee, may bank those hours as compensation in the form of time-off at a later time. (0000P4)
At first it sounds good but the details, as described by the clever sheep, shows that this is a fine way for a clever employer to get overtime out of the workers without having to pay. (0000P5)
People in the US already work far too much. Many in the group self-servingly called the creative class or knowledge workers have already given away their options for overtime while the boss walks away with the cash. (0000P6)
I did that for several years, and while I certainly gathered a lot of knowledge my creativity was flushed. (0000P7)
There are, though, some signs of improvement: GlaxoSmithKline shareholders have voted against a new executive compensation package. (0000P8)
Comments
You got overtime? Most of the people I work with have been classified as "exempt" according to the labor laws, which means we don't get overtime, period. (0000PN)
Those classifed as "non-exempt" (a really artificial distinction IMHO) in my experience are the ones who are required to get overtime. In general they also qualify for less vacation time and less money, as well as less autonomy on the job. So yes, these provisions are screwing the people who least deserve it--administrative professionals and junior staff, to name a few. (0000PO)
Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I got paid or compensated for that extra time. What I meant was that I worked more than 40 hours a week. In my I-don't-care-what-the-law-says vocabulary that's overtime. In a couple of years I'll be saying that over 35 or even 30 is overtime. (0000PP)
gqadlibtsu diizovyrmpe. (A8Z)