I work in IT. For a long time, we were all exempt; we worked our 40 hours a week, plus or minus (though it would more often be ‘plus’ than ‘minus’), and for the most part none of us cared.
Until the class-action lawsuit. We all received checks for “unpaid overtime”, and were all reclassified as hourly, non-exempt employees, as dictated by California law. Now, management is very clear that we are not allowed to work if we are not on the clock. If that means staying clocked in to work late, that’s fine. If it means that we have to clock in early from lunch because something came up, that’s what we do.
Paying us overtime is acceptable; having us perform “unpaid work” is not.
Yup. We (salaried exempt, IT workers) were recently informed we are expected to have at least 40 billable hours a week. Any other time we spend for things related to work (emails, meetings, unbillable client support work) is on top of that, and it’s “unreasonable to expect to work bankers’ hours”.
Tell them to go to hell or find another job. I have the same type of position and everything I do counts as “work” including everything you listed. It isn’t like I am going to meetings and sending e-mails because I just like it so much. I just got back from a really expensive seafood dinner that my client invited me to and paid for. I won’t bill them time for things like that because it was truly recreational but that is one of the only things I won’t bill for. They even voluntarily do things like pay for my iPhone and give me catered box seats to major sporting events. In turn, I treat them very well and don’t nickle and dime them.
I am lucky though because the managers at my client actively insist that my consulting company and I get paid for all hours, no matter what it is. They have more money than god so that should never be an issue. I can even double-bill if they need me to do something that isn’t included in the original contract and requires a supplemental one. Anything above 40 hours earns comp time to use at my discretion.
They want to keep me and not let me burn out so that is one way they can offer a fair deal. Tell your company that some IT employees do, in fact, work something like banker’s hours. The tradeoff is that I am on call almost all the time but that is rarely used these days because it gives me a personal incentive to design things well enough so that they don’t break easily in the first place or to have contingency plans that almost anyone can follow if they do.
Until and unless the fake salaried workers fight back or unite they’ll be in a race to the bottom. Or until they elect congresscritters who will put some effort in for the populace rather than for the corporate overlords.
IMO everyone who reports to the CEO should not be exempt. If you own the entire business you’re exempt; if not, not. These are simple clear rules and easy to administer. If the employer is benefitting the employee is being paid. Period.
As a teenager I worked at a pool. Policy was you were supposed to be on-site and ready to work 15 minutes before your official shift starting time (and official starting time was when you started to get paid). Official shift starting times were set to be the very second the pool opened/your lessons started. And of course just standing around not helping set-up was not acceptable.
You were also supposed to help tidy up the pool after the lessons / free swim period was over, even though you couldn’t whistle the end of the period until the official end time; which was also the very second we stopped getting paid. If you were really lucky the head-guard would sign-off on 15 minutes of extra time on your sheet if you had to stay too much later.
I put up with it, and the odd verbal reprimand, until my boss decided to give me a formal written warning for being just over 10 minutes ‘late’ for my shift. I refused to sign the write up unmodified. I took it ‘corrected’ to something like ‘punched in at 3:57 for a 4:00 shift’ and said I’d sign-off if he initialed the correction and gave me a copy. For some reason he didn’t want to hand me a free win with the labour board and he never complained about my ‘tardiness’ again.
I look back and can’t believe what I was willing to put up with when I was young and naive. (this was hardly the only violation of labour laws/standard practices they engaged in)
I’m an hourly employee (always have been, and probably always will be). I often get to work 10-20min before the official start of my shift. Since my current manager has the mindset of “If you’re in the hangar, you better be working on something!”, but will not approve OT unless we’re supporting VVIP flight ops, I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting in my car in the parking lot before work.
That’s the source of the infinite vacation scam, in part. People who never take vacation, or not a lot, sometimes have an incentive to take some when it is going away. But if it never goes away, no incentive to ever take any.
My daughter’s first commercial was shooting in two days, because that was all the studio time they had. All the actors were kids. A SAG Union rep came in and said “there will be no overtime on this set!”
The moment she laughed the experienced moms cracked up. And they shot until it was done. However all the kids got a penalty payment from the production company for violating the contract - which I’m sure was a lot cheaper than going over.
Once someone in management asked me about something as I waiting outside the store for my shift to start. I pointedly ignored her until I came in, went in the back, clocked in and came back out. When she asked me why, I said “I don’t work for free, and I will NOT be treated illegally.”
I’ve done work while off the clock at my most recent restaurant. Clocked out, I can change back in to street clothes and eat in a side room while waiting for my friend’s to get done. If they were rolling silverware or doing other side work, it’s only nice to help them out, especially since I have nothing better to do and it helps us all leave sooner.
Yeah, the but company isn’t making them do it. They are doing it on their own, even over the company’s objection.
I see. People work off the clock in order to get the work done they couldn’t on the clock. Strange (not you, but the people who do it), thanks for answering.
It is obvious that none of you work for any of the school systems around the USA. Teacher’s assistants and custodians are required to do different training programs. Of course there is never any time set aside for training. The training ends up being done online, at home. Don’t even think about the amount of time that teachers are required to put in. Between all the meetings, extra-curricular activities (running the gate for sports and things like that) and all the time they are required to donate during the summer keeping their license current I doubt they get much more than minimum wage in NC.
I work from home as a remote call-centre operator and am only paid for the time I am ‘logged in’ to the software that runs the show. However, built into that software is a system that logs you OFF when you are not actively making a phone-call…it’s called WRAP.
Now, we are allocated app 11% of wrap per shift which is nigh on impossible to adhere to: apart from taking calls, there’s a helluva lot of data entry that must be completed. Thus every minute over 11% that is spent in wrap is UNPAID by the company, and on some days that can add up to a substantial amount of lost pay.
The company employs over 2000 people here in Australia and a couple of other countries so they are getting freebie labor from a shitload of employees saving them shitloads of $ every day.
I’ve done it in the past. I’ve witnessed it many, many times over the course of my career. If you are perennially short staffed, you 1) don’t want to get into trouble with TPTB for not completing everything you were supposed to; 2) don’t want to dump what you weren’t able to do onto your coworker(s), and 3) aren’t allowed OT because of budgets and whatnot…you work off the clock. Hush hush, of course. It was the big unspoken secret.
Things have tightened in the past few years. My most previous employer switched middle management from hourly to salary, for one. My current employer does not allow OT in any way, shape, or form, so if we can’t accomplish what we’re supposed to within the time allotted, it simply doesn’t get done until the next day. Upper management may moan and groan about it, but there’s nothing they can do except entice you to work faster.
DesertRoomie was an hourly assistant manager at a gas station and was “expected” to be there fifteen minutes before her official punch-in time to take care of minutia. A while back (2009?) she was suddenly given a check to cover all of those fifteen minuteses for the years she’d worked there and told not to do that any more.
Two weeks later where I worked was the same thing. As CSRs on the phone we’d been expected to punch in on the dot primed and ready to go. Policy changed to punch in at the appointed time but the phones were programmed to come up in Aux (on the clock but not in the queue) and we had a maximum of eleven minutes to get all of our various software tools up and running, read accumulated emails, etc. and get into the queue. Unless something went wrong (usually a failure to connect to the Db in one thing or another) this was easy to accomplish; I typically took six minutes. In addition I was paid an extra fifteen minutes a day for the time the previous policy had been effect. It came to some $2,500 after deductions.
“Hmmm,” I said. “Somebody somewhere got sued.” Turned out it was WalMart.
Reading over the thread it appears we need another similar suit and a fully funded police force of federal & state labor officials to hunt down the remaining millions of businesses that deliberately steal from their employees every day.
You could start carefully documenting exactly how much time you’re doing work while logged off (and why it’s necessary to take more than 11% to do it all). Then, when you’re ready to leave the job, head over to your state labor/wage agency (and possibly a private lawyer) with a copy of all your documentation. You might get a little exit bonus.
[I’m sure me or someone else here could give advice on how to best document things if you’re interested]