So you’re essentially agreeing with me. There is no use in making a blanket law because there are many, many, many different situations.
That said, the post you quoted was more about pointing out the disconnect with changing reality whenever anyone says “We got along without…”. Of course we (the human race) got along without whatever one is complaining about. And we got along with a lot of things that the speaker takes for granted that their grandparents railed against. Change happens.
It’s not just about the person working until 10 pm. First, is that person very effective working 14 hours a day? There are studies showing that doing this leads to mistakes and quality issues. Second, in an emergency I can see it, but some places have permanent emergencies. (I worked for one.) Third, is the work really needed or is it to make up for not being able to do eight hours of work in eight hours? Then there is the impact on others. If those with lives are pressured to work insane hours, the company is going to have a major retention issue on its hands, especially when times are good.
Rewarding someone for hours worked alone is dangerous.
I worked on a major project where long before it became necessary they served dinner and while theoretically no one had to stay late, actually everyone had to. almost no real work got done, and the project was still a disaster. It helped me in that it gave me incentive to leave, which saved my marriage and maybe my life.
And to Smapti’s point that dedication has rewards - bullshit at least at most jobs I’ve been at. Maybe Smapti should reread my story about Mrs. Cad, her devotion to the company and then losing the promotion to someone form the outside. Or maybe answer this question - what if there are no promotions or not enough promotions for all of your hard workers?
Yes and no. Most of this stems from abuse of the exempt status (leaving out WalMart making employees working off the clock), so let’s posit a law along the lines that each job must have clearly defined duties given to the employee in writing upon hire (not sure if that makes it a legal contract but it would be required under the law) and exempt status only applies when the work pertains to the description. On-call status without additional pay would be limited so no more 24/7 at $40,000/yr. A system that can quickly dispense with complaints suck as state department of labor receives written description and what you did. If DOL agrees that it was outside the description, company can file a reply.
That in of itself would solve most of the issues leaving maybe 5% of cases where the law would not apply and each side needs to adapt.
The simplest solution is “must pay the employee X hours wages per message sent outside work hours”. That neatly encourages the boss to distinguish between genuine emergencies and dick-waving.
I worked for the consulting arm of an accounting firm (which means each project I could be reporting to a different boss). I knew partners and senior managers who seemed to operate on the same principal. Also knew managers and bosses prior to that gig with the same issue.
Business staffing in the late 20th/early 21st century has pretty much given up on giving 8 hours of work only. Reducing employee costs equates to better bonuses for those at the top. It’s why I became my own boss. The business cycle is cyclical, so at some point we might return to the great times of the mid-90s, but we’ve got to make due with the environment we have until then.
No doubt. I worked with people who would waste time during the day and only become active once they realized they were falling behind, thus necessitating ‘longer’ hours. Good managers (and I think there are more good than bad, but the bad are still legion) factor quality and quantity of work, not time at the office.
I would hate when people started to order dinner, because that would mean people would be wasting more time that could be spent outside of work (which goes back to the previous point). Take the time spent debating where to order from, what to order, ordering, and eating, and instead do the work and go the fuck home. It’s one thing when you are bumping right up against a deadline (that would have been highly improbable to hit anyway), it’s another thing when it is happening Tuesday - Thursday every week. That’s poor planning, poor budgeting and/or poor execution.
Let’s not. I’ve got too many issues with the idiots who right laws and who actually owns those idiots (on both sides of the aisle) that I don’t trust them to get it right, or even close to right. Your idea would make lawyers very very happy people (more billable hours!).
And if you don’t have hourly salaries, and instead your salary is based on simply being able to get the job done? Or if you work at a place where raises, bonuses, and promotions are actually handed out based on your ability to get the job done?
Dick-waving bosses will still find ways to be dick-waving bosses. Good bosses will have another handcuff to overcome.
You reduce the number of people, but not the work, so everyone left works longer hours. Now, compared when I started to work things are a lot more flexible about leaving early or doctors appointments, so it is not all bad. But on the average people work longer hours.
Monday - Thursday. And this was for about 100 people, so it was catered. The competing project did it, so we had to.
There was a story on public radio recently about a day care that had a problem with parents that habitually failed to pick up their kids on time. So they instituted a $5 fine for late pickups and the problem actually became a lot worse.
The theory is that paying the $5 fine relieved them of any feelings of guilt so they didn’t even try to show up on time.
So if we’re going to have a rule like this, the penalty has to be actually painful, and it had to be a penalty felt directly by the ultimate decision-maker, and can’t be written off or reimbursed.
My employer had a habit of screwing up my vacations by calling about stupid things or not trying to fix real problems long enough before they called me. I passed my own rule that ANY phone call while on on vacation results in 4 hours of comp time taken whenever I want (I originally wanted a whole day) even if it is just for a 10 second phone call. Virtually all the calls stopped after that although I had to use it once when they called me in Hawaii.
I think something like that is the appropriate level of compensation for the inconvenience. It should certainly be much more severe than just swapping it for regular time or even having to pay for overtime because that isn’t much disincentive at all for most businesses.
I almost always work 1-2 hours overtime, and have done so for the last 5 years. I work weekends as needed, about once a month. I check my emails as much as 18 hours a day. I do this because I can, because the work demands it, and the work days go by much more smoothly when I do. My boss works as much as I do, and is supportive of work/private time balance. This thread makes me feel like an oddity.
That’s from Freakonomics
I have my work email open in the background right now. I do about half of my work after hours. I’m also in sweats, on the treadmill, talking with you, and petting a cat while listening to an album and eating broccoli. Try* that *in the office.
That’s how it works in most of Western Europe if not all, I was stunned when I got hired in the US and my request for a contract produced blank stares. FTR, in countries where group agreements are the norm, often you get contracts written as a modification to the group agreement, along the lines of:
Company A (tax ID, etc) hires Physical Person B (tax ID, etc) to perform the duties of Job Title (anything which either is different from the group agreement or needs to be specified according to it, such as working hours/year and working times) with other conditions as per (applicable group agreement).
Most of my labor contracts occupied one DIN A4 side; commercial ones usually take between 3 and 5.
One of the nice things about collective agreements is that if you work in a given industry and you’ve bothered keep abreast of the agreements you know what to expect, what’s negotiable and not, etc.
That is part of the collective agreement or individual contract. Most of us don’t have hourly salaries, and I still don’t understand what “exempt” means - it’s just one of those concepts which are self-evident to those who have lived with them all their lives and confusing to those who have not.
To put it simply, “exempt” means you do not have certain rights under employment law, such as the right to overtime pay, the right to join a union, or the right to collective bargaining.
Is that true, about the union? I’ve been an exempt worker my academic career, and I am unionized (and get overtime of a type- if I teach more credits I get overload pay).
There are overlapping categories for those things I believe. I’m not an employment law expert so I’m not going to be able to explain it completely accurately. Some employees don’t get overtime. Some can be fired for joining a union. I believe they overlap but not completely.
Thanks for the explanation. The only ones I can think of for whom that would apply in Spain are military personnel, who are not allowed to join a sindicato, have no collective bargain (although note that their working conditions are set by negotiations between military personnel and the civilian government) and no worker’s reps; cops got workers’ reps before they could unionize. Even things like when a position gets overtime/comp and when a different kind of compensation is part of collective bargains which at their higher level are just one step below a law.
Thanks.
I don’t think that’s correct. I think under the FSLA exempt and non-exempt only refers to pay for hours worked. Non-exempt get paid for each hour of work and are covered by overtime and minimum wage. Exempt means you get paid the same irregardless of the hours worked. You work 90 hours this week and 10 the next? You get the same pay each week. Thus comp time does not exist for either because non-exempt you get paid for the hour you worked; for exempt working on Saturday does not mean you get 8 hours off for comp - but if I finish my project in 6 hours then I can take off the rest of the week. The problem is how many bosses actually apply that paradigm and how many expect 40 hours per week (and comp time) + time for special projects. <insert story of how I taught myself UNIX-C by writing a database from scratch>
So, correct me if I’m wrong but “exempt” should be read as “freely exploited”, right ?