How much better would your job be if it were Salaried nonexempt?

[MeanJoe]

Bump - I cannot disagree with anything you said there.

I’ll offer two anecdotes in response… Regarding your wife working as an associate with a law firm. I dated a woman through law school in NYC and as she entertained offers from large firms we had that basic math conversation about the salary versus the number of hours she’ll actually be working and how that translates to an hourly wage. Her trump card was by putting in the hours as a junior then senior associate she will be on track to make partner and then the REAL big money comes. Enough so that the 80 hour work weeks would still result in an insane “hourly rate” if you did the math. To me, anyone choosing that career is simply insane (no offense to Mrs. Bump) but for the few that make partner the financial rewards are the prize for that level of sacrifice. It is a tradeoff, not guaranteed naturally, but there is incentive.

Secondly, before I got my degree I was an hourly employee for a national business that had a call center operation in town. I was offered a promotion to assistant manager of a call center customer service department. It was a promotion, salaried, and I took the job. The salary, with extra hours, in the end wasn’t much more than I was making previously BUT again there was the additional skill sets and responsibilities I was developing in the new role. It could have served as a springboard to more opportunity in that field, so the overall lower rate of pay was a sacrifice I was willing to make at that time with a longer view in mind. In the end, I decided to return to college and take a different path but I can somewhat understand those who do take salaried positions that in the big picture are for less money once O.T. pay is removed. There can be trade-offs.

[Mama_Zappa]

@Tuxie

Googling tells me it is slightly different.

Salary nonexempt is for jobs where it is assumed you are always going to be working 40+ hours. So from a payroll prespective, it is easier to do since people will only need timecards if they are putting in overtime (which might not be terribly common for some nonexempt jobs).

Hourly is for jobs where the hours might vary widely; maybe you are working 36 hours one week and 52 hours another. While you would think some jobs would guarantee 40 hours a week depending on the nature of the job not all of them do.

No - “exempt” means you’re exempt from getting paid overtime.

In theory, it’s because you get paid the same amount even if your workload is less than 40 hours per week; in practice if I work less than 40 hours I have to count the difference as leave of some sort, but I get nothing for working MORE than 40 hours.

I have never entirely understood “salaried non-exempt” unless that refers to the fact that the person does have paid vacation / sick time available - versus someone working hourly where they do NOT have such benefits.

Salaried exempt is tempting for employers because they can assume (demand!) the employee will always work > 40 hours. We do typically need to do timesheets (using an online tool) because they need to track the actual hours worked, plus of course leave time etc. The employer is tempted to push, harder and harder, that the employees work far more than 40 hours a week because it DOESN’T COST THEM ANYTHING. In fact at my company, if you don’t work 44+ hours per week it gets you scrutiny from above It can be (and often is) abusive.

[Mama_Zappa]

@bump

Generally speaking, being salaried and exempt is a pretty great deal, IF you don’t routinely work over 40 hours a week. You get a paycheck of a guaranteed amount, you get a lot more flexibility in your time, along with nobody nitpicking whether you’re there at 8:00 or 8:08 am, nobody griping if you occasionally have a 2 hour lunch, and nobody griping that you skip out around 4 on Fridays. …

Bear in mind, that kind of flexibility is NOT a given with someone who is salaried/exempt. Businesses often have core hours, (e.g. flex time but everyone has to be there between 9 and 3), availability for meetings etc. may preclude wildly flexible hours, etc. I worked one place where if you had to stay til midnight, you were still expected to be in the office the next morning at 8;30 or whatever the normal starting time was.

Depending on the nature of the work, you may well have this kind of flexibility. For example yesterday I had to step out for a couple hours during the day, so I just worked into the evening to make up for it. One co-worker is in another time zone and she and I have often been online until midnight my time (I work remotely, which is a huge benefit that almost makes up for the insane hours and complete lack of raises / bonuses).

[bump]

@MeanJoe

Bump - I cannot disagree with anything you said there.

I’ll offer two anecdotes in response… Regarding your wife working as an associate with a law firm. I dated a woman through law school in NYC and as she entertained offers from large firms we had that basic math conversation about the salary versus the number of hours she’ll actually be working and how that translates to an hourly wage. Her trump card was by putting in the hours as a junior then senior associate she will be on track to make partner and then the REAL big money comes. Enough so that the 80 hour work weeks would still result in an insane “hourly rate” if you did the math. To me, anyone choosing that career is simply insane (no offense to Mrs. Bump) but for the few that make partner the financial rewards are the prize for that level of sacrifice. It is a tradeoff, not guaranteed naturally, but there is incentive.

The thing about lawyering that they don’t tell you unless you’re actually in the profession or closely associated with it, is that MOST lawyers aren’t the super highly paid types you see in movies and TV. Some are; a close law school friend of my wife was a civil litigation attorney at a big prestigious Dallas firm. She made crazy money (like 300K a year), but had similar billable hour requirements to my wife’s. But for every one like her, or my wife (who made 1/3 of what her friend did), there are 2-3 poor assistant DAs out there in some county making 35k a year. Or there’s are 2-3 wretched sole practitioners out there scraping for personal injury, traffic tickets and uncomplicated divorces like some sort of legal profession catfishes, and making in the 30-50k a year range.

Mama Zappa, I was talking about my last couple of jobs, and may have made it sound more loosey-goosey than it really is. We do(did?) have core hours, but they’re like 9-3, and you’re expected to be available for meetings during those times. And generally we don’t have flex-time, as they’re not tracking our hours. You’re usually expected to show up the next day on time after a midnight fire-drill, although in reality most people around here would just probably work from home that day in that situation.

The one thing they really shouldn’t be doing (although they do anyway) is requiring you to work a set number of hours. As in, if you miss 2 hours for a doctor’s appointment some afternoon, you don’t necessarily have to make that up in terms of time- you are on the hook to complete any job tasks you missed. So if you didn’t have anything that was absolutely due that afternoon, there’s no reason whatsoever that those 2 hours should have to be “made up”.

Quibbling about time like that is absolutely contrary to the spirit and I believe, the letter of the law when it comes to being salaried and exempt; AFAIK, all you have to do is work at ALL during a pay period to get paid for it in its entirety.

To me, that’s a product of that hourly work mentality that I saw at the manufacturing places I worked at; there was a very different mentality when it came to working, work hours, being on-time, etc… I didn’t know any better, being right out of college, but I’ve subsequently learned that a lot of the stuff they did skated awfully close to being illegal, and definitely was probably onerous to a lot of the salaried types.

[MandaJo]

Well, my job is just the suckiest of all worlds, then. School day is 9:15 - 4:15 and there’s no flexibility about any of that: lunch is 30 minutes. If you need to be a little late or a little early, you have to take a half day, arrange a sub, write sub plans. You can’t take PTO in units of less than a half day, and people can rarely cover for you because they have their own classes.

I’ve averaged legit over 60 hours a week since Xmas, and will be doing that for more weeks than not until May (though it lets up a little in March). If I got paid for that, it’d be tremendous, but in actuality, if I got paid for that, we’d never get it approved, but expectations wouldn’t be lowered, and we’d just have to hide all the work we would be doing.

There is overtime pay for some tasks, but it’s generally $20/hr, which is more half-pay than pay-and-a-half.

I actually really, really like my job, and this is coming out more angsty than I intended (possibly because I am currently exhausted), but the structural aspects of teaching suck.

[Asimovian]

Anything I was possibly considering posting as a complaint about my current circumstances as a salaried exempt employee was nullified by Manda JO’s post. I can’t compete with that.

[JcWoman]

@bump

The one thing they really shouldn’t be doing (although they do anyway) is requiring you to work a set number of hours. As in, if you miss 2 hours for a doctor’s appointment some afternoon, you don’t necessarily have to make that up in terms of time- you are on the hook to complete any job tasks you missed. So if you didn’t have anything that was absolutely due that afternoon, there’s no reason whatsoever that those 2 hours should have to be “made up”.

Quibbling about time like that is absolutely contrary to the spirit and I believe, the letter of the law when it comes to being salaried and exempt; AFAIK, all you have to do is work at ALL during a pay period to get paid for it in its entirety.

Absolutely! A former boss once told me (when I was young and fussing about being asked to work “overtime” for free) that I am paid for my responsibilities, not my time. But you’re right that a LOT of employers take total advantage and even clock watch you to death. Many people feel guilty if they don’t put in a “full day’s work” even if their job is technically done early, so that causes a lot of sitting around looking busy and wasting time. I do that too, because I work very quickly and am usually done early in the day. Or my work comes in fits, so I do some work, fart around for an hour, more work rolls in so I do it, then fart around for another two hours, find some more work, then fart around… etc.

[Doug_K]

@bump

The one thing they really shouldn’t be doing (although they do anyway) is requiring you to work a set number of hours. As in, if you miss 2 hours for a doctor’s appointment some afternoon, you don’t necessarily have to make that up in terms of time- you are on the hook to complete any job tasks you missed. So if you didn’t have anything that was absolutely due that afternoon, there’s no reason whatsoever that those 2 hours should have to be “made up”.

Quibbling about time like that is absolutely contrary to the spirit and I believe, the letter of the law when it comes to being salaried and exempt; AFAIK, all you have to do is work at ALL during a pay period to get paid for it in its entirety.

To me, that’s a product of that hourly work mentality that I saw at the manufacturing places I worked at; there was a very different mentality when it came to working, work hours, being on-time, etc… I didn’t know any better, being right out of college, but I’ve subsequently learned that a lot of the stuff they did skated awfully close to being illegal, and definitely was probably onerous to a lot of the salaried types.

In my first salaried job I normally worked 5 days (out of six) a week, and had to be there ten minutes before opening until after closing time, with 30 minutes for lunch. If someone called in sick on my day off (which varied from week to week) I had to work with no extra pay. If someone was on vacation there were no days off for anyone else that week, and no extra pay. We had 5 vacations days (10 after 2 years) and 5 sick days. If we used more than that we were docked. Work six days, get paid for 5. Work 4 days, get paid for 4.

Could we have turned him in? Possibly, and maybe even collected some back overtime, but it would have been a pyrrhic victory.

[adhemar]

@Mama_Zappa

No - “exempt” means you’re exempt from getting paid overtime.

In theory, it’s because you get paid the same amount even if your workload is less than 40 hours per week; in practice if I work less than 40 hours I have to count the difference as leave of some sort, but I get nothing for working MORE than 40 hours.

I have never entirely understood “salaried non-exempt” unless that refers to the fact that the person does have paid vacation / sick time available - versus someone working hourly where they do NOT have such benefits.

Salaried exempt is tempting for employers because they can assume (demand!) the employee will always work > 40 hours. We do typically need to do timesheets (using an online tool) because they need to track the actual hours worked, plus of course leave time etc. The employer is tempted to push, harder and harder, that the employees work far more than 40 hours a week because it DOESN’T COST THEM ANYTHING. In fact at my company, if you don’t work 44+ hours per week it gets you scrutiny from above It can be (and often is) abusive.

I am salaried non exempt and I don’t get it either. The main differences are that I don’t punch a time clock ( enter my time in a website) and I get more vacation time sooner than the hourly staff. My benefits in general tend are like the salried managers rather than the hourly floor people. I work in an office in a warehouse and I am one of two people in my actual job type in the entire corporation. The other person is actually a higher level than I am and I do more work, more varied work and even part of his location’s work. I a worried that I will be promoted and the new job is a salaried exempt position and I work way too much over time for that.

[bump]

@Doug_K

In my first salaried job I normally worked 5 days (out of six) a week, and had to be there ten minutes before opening until after closing time, with 30 minutes for lunch. If someone called in sick on my day off (which varied from week to week) I had to work with no extra pay. If someone was on vacation there were no days off for anyone else that week, and no extra pay. We had 5 vacations days (10 after 2 years) and 5 sick days. If we used more than that we were docked. Work six days, get paid for 5. Work 4 days, get paid for 4.

Could we have turned him in? Possibly, and maybe even collected some back overtime, but it would have been a pyrrhic victory.

Oh, I’m aware. The reason I’d looked into the laws in the first place were because at my first job, they’d shut the facility down for 2 weeks straight over Xmas, and basically make everyone take vacation or unpaid leave. Yet my boss and I had to show up and change backup tapes and do some other IT scut-work because there were the workaholics who showed up to work anyway.

We felt we were getting fucked around because we were being forced to take time off, and yet required to show up in some capacity. Of course that outfit went bankrupt and has been gone for about a decade now, so I suppose karma bit them in the ass.

[doreen]

@Tuxie

Googling tells me it is slightly different.

Salary nonexempt is for jobs where it is assumed you are always going to be working 40+ hours. So from a payroll prespective, it is easier to do since people will only need timecards if they are putting in overtime (which might not be terribly common for some nonexempt jobs).

Hourly is for jobs where the hours might vary widely; maybe you are working 36 hours one week and 52 hours another. While you would think some jobs would guarantee 40 hours a week depending on the nature of the job not all of them do.

OK, a question for all the salary non-exempt people. The non-exempt people at my job have a consistent schedule of 37.5 hours per week. But if one of them has used up all of their assorted leave time , they might take a day of leave without pay and work and be paid for only 30 hours that week. Or even take 2.5 hours off and be paid for 35.To my mind, that makes them hourly workers- but what happens with salary non-exempt when you take a day off and don’t have leave to cover it? Do you get paid less or do you jus get extra time off?

[monstro]

@doreen

OK, a question for all the salary non-exempt people. The non-exempt people at my job have a consistent schedule of 37.5 hours per week. But if one of them has used up all of their assorted leave time , they might take a day of leave without pay and work and be paid for only 30 hours that week. Or even take 2.5 hours off and be paid for 35.To my mind, that makes them hourly workers- but what happens with salary non-exempt when you take a day off and don’t have leave to cover it? Do you get paid less or do you jus get extra time off?

This doesn’t happen too often where I work, since we have very generous leave. But if a person has exhausted all their leave and they wind up sick, then they qualify for short-term disability, which (IIRC) allows up to six months at 60% of your salary.

Also, people with special circumstances can receive leave that is donated by fellow employees. But your circumstances need to be very special.

Unpaid leave is available to those who exhaust their paid leave. But I don’t know how long a person can be in this position before they can be fired.

[adhemar]

I would be short the hours. We are in the slow part of our year and a week ago I only got 39 hours for the week. I could have found something else to do for the extra hour but decided I would rather go home and enjoy some leisure time.

[doreen]

@monstro

This doesn’t happen too often where I work, since we have very generous leave. But if a person has exhausted all their leave and they wind up sick, then they qualify for short-term disability, which (IIRC) allows up to six months at 60% of your salary.

Also, people with special circumstances can receive leave that is donated by fellow employees. But your circumstances need to be very special.

Unpaid leave is available to those who exhaust their paid leave. But I don’t know how long a person can be in this position before they can be fired.

It actually happens all the time where I work, even though we have generous leave policies and donations in cases of serious illness. Someone is fairly new, hasn’t accrued much leave and took a week vacation with the five days they’ve earned or is one of the people who never saves any leave for emergencies or just had surgery and exhausted all their leave or - and then goes home 2 hours early because they’re sick. It seems to me that if someone doesn’t get paid for those two hours, then they are actually being paid on an hourly basis (since they are being paid for hours worked + hours of leave used) rather than on a salary basis ( a certain amount for a certain period of time regardless of hours). I’m not saying a person couldn’t be paid a salary plus overtime- but I’d be really surprised if there were a job where you were expected to work 40 hours, got paid for 40 hours even if you took time off without having leave to cover it and also got overtime for anything over 40 hours in a different week.
Oh, and to address something else- as far as the DOL is concerned the difference between non-exempt and exempt is strictly about deductions from pay. An exempt employee can absolutely be expected to work a certain number of hours per week, can be expected to adhere to a strict schedule with no flexibility, can be required to work two extra hours on Wed to make up for leaving two hours early on Tuesday, can be required to obtain approval to take time off, can be required to cover for coworkers etc. If you don’t have to do those things, that’s because your employer chooses not to require it, not because it’s illegal. The employer can’t dock an exempt employee’s paycheck for partial day absences certain full day absences but they can discipline or even fire the employee for not working the prescribed schedule or a minimum number of hours.

[msmith537]

I worked for one consulting firm years ago where we were actually compensated for time we billed over the standard 40 hours a week. It wasn’t overtime per se as the rate was less than what our equivalent hourly rate would have been based on our salary. And it was gamed somewhat so you had to work those hours consistently. But in an industry where you are expected to work long hours and weekends, it was nice to actually be compensated for it.
Although, even being compensated, eventually you just get fucking sick of calls on weekends and new projects starting Friday at 5pm, no matter how much they pay you.

[sisu]

I get paid an annual agreed wage with 40% of my package “at risk” ( based on sales, revenue, cust sat, EBITDA and employee sat).

If I work 20 hours or 200 a week I get paid the same base but if I achieve results then I can get over the extra 40% but if I don’t then I could lose the 40%.

I am a manager in a large corporation and sometimes my week can be 20 hours or 100…average about 35.

[betterlifethroughchemistry]

@Little_Nemo

I’m retired now but when I was working I had several opportunities to take a promotion to the next higher level. But such a promotion would have moved me from a wages job to a salaried job - and with the routine overtime I was making, that would have been around a ten thousand dollar paycut. (And it wouldn’t have significantly reduced my hours either. The people in the salaried position were “encouraged” to work extra hours.)

Years ago, when I first started working at a specialty chemical company as a chemist, the company hired a newly-retired 25 year Army vet who retired at the rank of master sergeant. He was originally drafted out of high school, served two tours in Vietnam, and decided on an Army career. He earned both a BS and master’s degree in the Army. I also have a good HS friend who dropped out of college in the early '80’s, joined the Nay sub service, became a navigator on fast attack subs and retired after 22 years with a BS and MS in engineering thanks to the Navy.

Being the son of a retired (and now deceased) AF/ANG officer, I’ve asked both the same question - why didn’t you go to OCS and become an officer? Both answered the same - why start back at the bottom?

I have a good friend who graduated HS and has worked the last 20+ years in a locally bottling operation which is owned now by a large beverage company. He is the most senior person on the floor and basically runs all of the lines. Every year, his bosses sit him down to explain the benefits of being a salaried manager and he politely turns them down as he is making a killing working OT, holidays, etc. And they let him go because they also know that plant would not run anywhere near the efficiency it does without him on the floor 12 hours a day.

[betterlifethroughchemistry]

@msmith537

I worked for one consulting firm years ago where we were actually compensated for time we billed over the standard 40 hours a week. It wasn’t overtime per se as the rate was less than what our equivalent hourly rate would have been based on our salary. And it was gamed somewhat so you had to work those hours consistently. But in an industry where you are expected to work long hours and weekends, it was nice to actually be compensated for it.
Although, even being compensated, eventually you just get fucking sick of calls on weekends and new projects starting Friday at 5pm, no matter how much they pay you.

I am so incredibly blessed to be a director at a small specialty chemical company for the last four years, and I hope, until I retire…it’s an OA5 company (a concept I first heard in 'The Dilbert Principle", thanks, Scott Adams), but never thought existed…

We make very specialized products for very specialized markets. Our products go into large OEM applications where the performance of our products is paramount, but the cost is insignificant compared to the overall cost of the equipment. We charge a premium for our products, which the OEMs gladly accept as one, they know they work, two, we fully test 100%, and three, it’s a drop in the bucket of the overall cost.

Everyone is on the job at 8 a.m., and the parking lot is empty at 5:02 with an hour lunch…

Given the fact I worked for large multinational chemical companies for 25 years where 50+ hours in the lab might be accompanied by two-three weeks on the road traveling the world, promotion for me meant 80+ hour weeks, two weeks in Asia three times a year, two weeks in Europe three time a year, plus domestic travel in between, leaving my wife to raise three boys…yes, I was financially supporting the family well, but hearing the highlights of the latest Little League game from Shanghai sometimes really sucked…as did the constant domestic travel, from Shreveport to San Jose to Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Pensacola, Dallas, ugh, it all runs together…and all for the same money whether you worked 40 or 80 hours in a week…

So, now, I make more than I ever have, feel like I contribute well to a really dedicated, motivated team, and have to stop myself from groaning when my wife asks me to stop at the grocery store on my way home as it cuts into my 7 minute commute…

[Khendrask]

@doreen

OK, a question for all the salary non-exempt people. The non-exempt people at my job have a consistent schedule of 37.5 hours per week. But if one of them has used up all of their assorted leave time , they might take a day of leave without pay and work and be paid for only 30 hours that week. Or even take 2.5 hours off and be paid for 35.To my mind, that makes them hourly workers- but what happens with salary non-exempt when you take a day off and don’t have leave to cover it? Do you get paid less or do you jus get extra time off?

I’m Salary non-exempt, and technically my official paid salary time is 37.5 hrs/week. That is a normal 8 hour day, with a half hour lunch.
In reality, I put in about 8 hours a day usually. Some days, I put in less.
I don’t punch a time clock.
I generally start somewhere between 5AM and 9AM, and leave about 8 hours later.
If I work any overtime in a week, it’s up to me what to do with it. If it’s just a couple hours, I’ll generally just leave a couple hours earlier on Friday. If it’s more than a couple hours, say more than 8, I’ll usually submit it, and get paid at my equivalent hourly rate for the 8 hours.
If I call out for a day, I get paid. If I’m out sick or with family problems for 3 or 4 days, as long as I call in, I get paid. Both without affecting my vacation time.
I get paid twice a month, nice and consistent.

I love Salary non-exempt. This is the second job that I’ve had that I’ve been in that class, and it is sooooo much nicer (at least in my field) than hourly.

For the record, I’m in a technical services field, but I only deal with my company, no clients or end users. My last position was the same, except as a field service technician for a technology company.

[Dangerosa]

@doreen

OK, a question for all the salary non-exempt people. The non-exempt people at my job have a consistent schedule of 37.5 hours per week. But if one of them has used up all of their assorted leave time , they might take a day of leave without pay and work and be paid for only 30 hours that week. Or even take 2.5 hours off and be paid for 35.To my mind, that makes them hourly workers- but what happens with salary non-exempt when you take a day off and don’t have leave to cover it? Do you get paid less or do you jus get extra time off?

Most jobs I’ve worked, as a salaried person taking a day off here or there, I don’t bother to put it down for vacation - I just don’t come in. Or, if I have a doctors or dentist appointment, I can work from home for the day and it doesn’t count. Generally, any day I touch email or call in for a single meeting is not an eight hour vacation day. So it becomes hard to run out, because I don’t use them for dentist appointments, school events, the occasional mental health day or a long weekend.

Sometimes I’ve worked where I’m billable - that’s my current situation - and then its different. But even then, there is some flexibility, I’m not expected to bill 2000 hours a year like an attorney - my time is just tracked more closely.

Everywhere, if I do run out of time, they’d have let me go into the hole. Policy says you pay back the hole if you leave in a negative vacation situation, but I’ve never known anyone who has had to.