Yeah. I know this is true, but it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you are “salaried” the whole idea is that you get a fixed rate of pay to get your job done, regardless of actual hours worked. It’s even called “exempt” at most companies, meaning exempt from overtime.
If they are getting overtime for hours worked over 35, what is the difference between them and “non-salaried” or “non-exempt” employees?
By the way, I’ve worked at American companies where the workweek is 35 hours so it’s not an entirely French concept.
Maybe because by making you salaried and exempt, your employer doesn’t have to pay you for the time you actually work? Does that seem like a good idea to anybody but the employer?
Actually, no. Rune’s whole argument is that there are alternatives. Now, employers don’t like the alternatives because it is more expensive than asking people to stay late and not get paid. But, one can, as he pointed, hire more staff or pay overtime, etc. etc.
I’m sorry you suffer from the poverty of imagination or gullibility to believe that “it just has to be done.” “Nope, there’s no other way around it, Debaser, you’re just going to have to it on the chin.” But the fact that you personally cannot negotiate in your best interest (because of timidity or a weak bargaining position) does not mean that other people who have avoided this pitfall are wrong to promote their own best interests.
Self-described capitalists who resent that other people have been able to strike better deals than they hardly deserve the name. Although that doesn’t seem to stop them.
The US is actually more of an exception than the rule in terms of having an explicit class of “exempt” employees. So, it’s us that’s weird, not the other way around. It works the other way around than your POV. Those employees are paid regardless of whether or not they work a full week. So, it’s in the best interests of the company to ensure they only have enough employees to do the work and no more. But also in their interests not to try skimping by not hiring enough employees and covering the shortfall with what is effectively unpaid overtime.
I agree there’s not much other functional difference in this case, but that’s kind of how most salaried employees in the US are theoretically supposed to work as well. It just never works that way in practice. Other countries often have employment contracts instead of the more “at will” nature you find in the US. The terms of employment (including hours worked) can change and employees/employers can hash them out better.
Even in the US, in theory a company that regularly expects salaried employees to work a lot of overtime may become uncompetitive because employees will go elsewhere in a competitive marketplace. But that doesn’t always work. There are often distorting factors that prevent a real competitive marketplace for potential employees and employers. The regular stories about overtime rule violations at Wal-Marts or game industry testers or classifying effectively real employees as “outside contractors” to avoid labor laws are all proof such factors exist.
Both my French and Scottish coworkers did. I eat dinner at five when possible, since I find that it sits better with me than the later hours common in Spain.
And by your own account, you DID know people who ate dinner at five every day: your French coworkers. Do you not consider them people?
That whole thing with health care - not just for you but your whole family - is so alien ouitside the US. What the hell does your employer - employer FFS! - have to do with the health of your family: it’s edging towards serfdom.
And the other stuff about the ease with which people can be fired, short vacations, fewer national days … ugly, ugly shit.
Like I mentioned earlier, the 8-hour day is 150 years old. Move on.
Careful with the vacation thing: while the Americans do get less vacation, it’s also something which gets counted differently in different places. Americans don’t count “days my job location is closed due to a holiday” as part of their vacation; in Spain we count by “worked yearly hours” and location closings are part of vacation time. It’s yet another one of those concepts which are nowhere near as straightforward as one may think.
Yeah, it can be hard to compare, depending on the country. In India, for example, if you take a Friday and Monday off, and you usually get Saturday and Sunday off, some employers will count that as taking four days off.
It works the other way too. I plan on leaving early today and I’m still going to get paid. If you are balancing it correctly it ends up evening out in the end.
Yes, totally agreed. As an American, I much prefer our system. I get that we’re different from most others, but my post was an admission that I simply don’t get the attitude of overtime for exempt employees. It just doesn’t compute for me since our system isn’t set up that way.
But if you’re balancing it, then it doesn’t matter. Getting paid by the hour doesn’t make any difference if you’re giving an hour here and taking an hour there. But in most cases, you’re just giving extra hours all the time, without taking them back anywhere. Which is what your employer counts on, which is why salary is an option for them because it works out to their advantage in the long run to make you exempt from being paid overtime.
It’s not “taking it on the chin” to have to work late every once in a while.
I’d actually much prefer a job that has flexible hours and allows me to leave early when I need to and work late sometimes to make up for it. That’s much more desirable than a job that has rigid 9-5 hours that can’t make an exception for me if I’ve got a doctors appointment or something.
Your attitude comes across as so rabidly anti-employer that you aren’t willing or able to see that.
It’s also simply true that it does have to be done sometimes. People in IT especially do end up having to work on nights and weekends. Those are the best times to do things like release new code or upgrade hardware. I know at my current company we release code monthly on Saturday mornings and the people working the release all take a half day some other time to make up for it.
Is this abuse they are suffering? What’s the alternative? Hire special people just to work a couple hours one Saturday a month? Frankly, your attitude sounds like you aren’t even employable.
You’re conflating “salary vs hourly” and “strict 9-5 schedule”. Being hourly doesn’t necessitate an inflexible schedule, and being salaried doesn’t automatically mean having one that is flexible. You’re also not outlining why needing a flexible schedule by means of a salaried position should mean that your employer doesn’t have to pay you overtime if you work it.
Do you have a cite for this? Or is this just an opinion that you have?
Every employee I know would rather be salaried. People that come in to companies as hourly contractors generally seek to prove themselves and become salaried. If being salaried is such a raw deal for employees then why is it coveted by them?
True or false: If you are hourly, then you don’t get paid for hours that you don’t work. So if I’m hourly and I leave three hours early for a doctors appointment I’m going to get a lighter paycheck, unless I make up that time that week.
If I’m salaried, I leave three hours early and don’t worry about it.
If you are managing your work life balance correctly you shouldn’t need overtime for extra hours. One week you might work 45 hours and the next week you might work 35. It all evens out in the end.
If you are working 45 hours every week then you should be getting paid accordingly, with a higher salary. There’s a company near me that is notorious for paying extremely well but requiring 60 hour weeks. People that choose to work there know exactly what they are getting into.
If I had to guess, the reason salaried positions are so coveted is because people like you still think they’re making out better in the deal. And anyway, we aren’t arguing about whether salaried positions are enviable or not. We’re arguing about whether salaried positions should be exempt from paid overtime.
For example, when I worked in pharmacy, Pharmacists were salaried at one rate with a base of a certain number of hours worked. But, because they have a special non-exempt status under the law as Professionals, they are paid at their normal rate for any hours worked over the base number of hours. Now, why should other salaried professionals be exempt from being paid overtime? It can only work out to be beneficial for the employer, that’s why. You never benefit from working over 40 hours and not being paid for it. And when you work under 40 hours, you are still acknowledging that you’re making up for it another time. Hence them having a salary with the expectation of a base number of hours worked.
But that wasn’t your contention before. You said earlier that sometimes people just have to stay late because things just have to get done, and since you were salaried that was expected. It’s not expected everywhere, is what others are saying. If you are working 45 hours a work week, you should be getting paid for 45 hours of work. Not an arbitrarily higher salary because the expectations are that you’re going to work more than you’re actually getting paid for.
Actually, after reflecting, I think the 45 hours work week if that’s what you’re agreeing to going into the job is acceptable. It’s the idea that you’re working 40, getting paid for 40, except when you’re working more than 40 and then you’re not getting paid for that at all, which is not acceptable to me.