CA Legislature Torpedoes IT Overtime 555
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent piece of California legislation is enabling tech firms to avoid paying their workers overtime. Originally designed to deal with bonds for children's hospitals, bill AB10 was completely rewritten to prevent lawsuit damages over overtime nonpayment. "'This is the first time that the Legislature has done a takeaway of the rights of private-sector workers as part of the budget deal,' said Caitlin Vega of the California Labor Federation. 'We just think it is wrong. We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid.'"
well (Score:1, Insightful)
Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Good - I didn't want to work those weekends anyway, and now I have a good reason not to do it.
Hurts the economy, too (Score:5, Insightful)
We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid
Not only that, but as this legislation allowed massive abuse of employee's time, the state will suffer as skilled workers start looking elsewhere for employment.
It's a balance (Score:1, Insightful)
A balance must be struck between the freedom of each individual and the responsibility of each individual to support colleagues.
By joining a union, an individual gives up personal freedom and the opportunity for exceptional advancement. But he gains the power of collective bargaining and the benefit of a standardized work environment.
It surprises me to see how a group of individuals so smart in some ways would not also see the benefit inherent in joining together to avoid being subject to exactly the type of persecution described in the article.
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks, I much prefer individual bargaining than collective bargaining. I'm making more money and working at a vastly cooler company than ANY unionized employee could possibly be.
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. And, now, apparently, you can't sue over that fact any more. :-P
Cheers
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
get what you pay for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I work 9 to 5. I work HARD 9 to 5, but at 5 I log out and go home. If you want me to spend extra time at work then we need to do some negotiation for a new contract and you're going to be giving me more money.
I am not going to give up time with my family so some middle manager can get some slaps on his back for bringing in the project on a date he never should have agreed to in the first place. What ever happened to accountability? oh right.... they get $700bn bail outs.
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a balance (Score:5, Insightful)
You basically answered your own question. Those who excel (or at least believe they do) have no incentive to give up their freedom and opportunities for advancement to protect those who don't perform as well.
Why work it then? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are not getting paid for your time or getting equivalent time-off in-lieu of, why would you work it?
Re:Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
If we put control over everything in the hands of the employers, they'd all decide to screw over the employees. You now have to work 200 hours/week for 80% less money -- because we said so.
The reason that government mandates this is to provide minimum standards, and not create abjectly crappy working conditions for people. You know, try to improve people's lives instead of making them indentured servants.
Of course, this is the point where you say that if you don't like it, you're free to leave and get another job. To which I'll respond that just leads us in the race to the bottom of crappy employment standards, and undoes several generations of changes in working conditions.
Setting the standard to whoever is willing to work in the worst conditions for the least money doesn't benefit any of us. It treats people like commodities, and devalues both their work, and their existence.
If all of the jobs are crappy and trying to screw you over, we all lose.
Cheers
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Who modded you "insightful", someone else who didn't even read the summary?
You think it's OK to work someone for free? You actually believe that if I work for you and you don't pay me I shouldn't be able to sue you?
No wonder the economy is headed down the toilet; it's people like you who run things who are running them into the ground.
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not laziness to want to eat dinner with one's family. Nor is it laziness to want to spend the weekend caring for them.
It is ridiculous to think that the company owns so much of your life that work should take the highest priority in one's life.
Re:well (Score:1, Insightful)
Not over-weening socialist government, but political lackeys of Big Tech. Either way, however, your point is excellently made: this has nothing to do with free markets, and everything to do with government mucking about in business. Us IT Classical Liberals oppose mandated overtime; but taking away our ability to sue is like castration.
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:3, Insightful)
Take your strawman and go home please.
My point was that if your work environment is sub-satisfactory, you're a technology worker, and you're good at your job, you can go find a new job with conditions you approve of without too much trouble. Not that you need to work insane hours and give up your family life.
Unions are great if you're in an industry where geography or market dynamics mean that you don't have a choice as to who your employer is, and said employer can take advantage of that monopoly. As software developers, we don't have anythin even close to that situation. If you can't find a job that fits your lifestyle, chances are you're either lazy, or not very good.
Re:get what you pay for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 2 ways to be paid: Based on Effort, or based on Results.
By and large, great employees want to be judged on results, and mediocre ones want to be judges based on effort. The problem is in many fields (including most IT jobs) it is difficult to turn results into a number you can be paid based on, so the industry by and large rewards effort instead.
That's one of the main reasons I work for a small company: We value results over effort. If I can get my job done in 1/2 the time allotted, that's great. If it takes me 2x as long, sucks for me. So it puts positive pressure on my to improve and be more productive in less time, the exact opposite of the pressure at most companies.
the trade off (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked some unpaid overtime in my life, but the amount is miniscule in comparison to the amount of time I've spent during normal working hours surfing the web, reading usenet, emailing my buddies, checking sports scores, ordering stuff from amazon, everything the internet allows. Easily two to three hours a day on an ongoing basis.
I just can't get mad about a couple hours of evening work or blowing a sunday afternoon in the office once a month when I'm just going to read slashdot while waiting for a batch job to finish.
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the uppercase word should be suit, not government. Government is not preventing you from negotiating for overtime pay with your employer. Free market is still operating. What they are preventing is a lawsuits on a premise which is absurd to start with, i.e. that you can get a job with an employer that doesn't pay overtime, work overtime while knowing that you won't get paid for it, then sue the employer. A real libertarian would say if overtime pay is what you're after, a) don't take that job, or b) don't work overtime, of c) if the employer insist you work overtime anyway, find another job
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Democrats are joiners; they consider groups rather than individuals; they believe that centralized power in the hands of a large organization is the best way to run things, while the peons have no responsibility for themselves. They like to receive healthcare, pensions, and womb-to-tomb "care" from such an organization, and believe the rest of us should as well.
Republicans are more likely to be self-sufficient go-getters, to work at startups where they have a hand in the direction, focus, and success of their endeavor. They expect to have to earn everything they get.
Yes, I do expect to be modded down.
I must disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh, the unfailing lament of the free market capitalist who believes that the market will solve all problems, and that any casualties of such an atrociously Darwinian and uncaring system are their own problem.
See, the free market really only tries to do a couple of things -- allow people to pursue their own interests with no regard whatsoever for everyone else. It largely tends to make a bunch of groups rich, and completely steam roll over everyone else.
I believe that market factors will drive a lot of things, and many of them it will do a good job of. Actually trying to improve the lives of people is not one of them, and certainly, it doesn't attempt to help people who have stumbled on the way. That's why civil societies have governments, to try to help out everyone else and protect the rights of all of us. Not being unduly abused by your employer is one of them.
I already said elsewhere in this thread you'd trot out this old chestnut, and you've not disappointed me. And, as you said to me, I completely disagree with you.
Uncontrolled, unbridled capitalism is only good if you're rich, or in the middle of getting rich -- it basically craps on everyone who isn't, and leaves them to fend for themselves on the bottom.
Cheers
I'm sorry, but if you're salaried, why do you... (Score:4, Insightful)
...believe you deserve extra pay? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I just really don't understand the justification. I've been salaried since I got out of school and I've always accepted that working beyond normal business hours was a possibility (and quite often a reality.) If you have a salaried job and don't like the overtime you have to put in, find a better job. Saying that, I now it isn't easy for everyone to do such a thing but there are significant differences (usually) between the benefits, hours, flexibility, and types of jobs when discussing an hourly position and a salaried position. I mean, the whole reason companies offer salaries is for this reason (afaik.)
My choice (Score:2, Insightful)
In my case, I'm never really away from my job. I'm constantly working from home on the weekends or weekdays. Either it's a phone call, R&D, or finishing some project planning. I feel I can accomplish more working away from the office, because when the kids and wife go to bed, I have absolutely no interruptions.
And to me, working all those hours and not getting paid for is my choice. But working all those hours has helped me advance with my current company. Going on 13 years, I've had 4 promotions and 4 major raises. I was just promoted again 3 weeks ago. I'm now in a place were I'm financially very comfortable. All because of hard work, dedications, and patience (remember that young guns!!). Besides this IS my life's work!
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well (Score:2, Insightful)
There are two Americas. In one America, people get paid according to hours worked and in accordance with clearly stated policies. The other America is IT. Everywhere I've worked, IT staff were expected to work at least 9 hours, and be on call 24/7. Granted, these have all been small and medium sized companies, and certainly had nothing resembling a union or any kind of advocacy. So it was just expected. IT is expected to pitch in as if they are part of management.
Oh Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
"the tracking of hours generally is anathema to the creative and free thinking computer professional employees,"
Indeed. As is the tracking of inventory.
I'm getting my overtime pay one way or another.
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Your political heroes at work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The "free market" does cut both ways; however, both sides are rarely equally sharp.
For instance for a worker to leave his or her job that worker would have to take a loss in income. With rising debt and unemployment currently seen in this nation it is unlikely that many could afford to leave their companies. Also such high barriers to entry still largely apply to employees leaving one company and moving to another. It will still take months to learn a new code base.
Companies don't have families, they don't need to eat, sleep or breath and they can't be sent to jail. Also they don't have balls.
Re:It's a balance (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, did you just advocate REMOVING Right To Work laws? Are you insane? Should we just go back to a guild system where if you want to learn a trade, everyone already working the trade can decide you're not allowed to? Wasn't that awesome?
Re:well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are quite OK with entitlement. The difference is that republicans don't like it when someone else is receiving it.
Re:well (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of you IT people are libertarians, this is what a free market does to you. Don't like it? Find another job.
What does the government of CA setting legislation that prohibits people from suing their employer over what they perceive to be unfair treatment have to do with a free market?
Re:Thank you (Score:2, Insightful)
If that's what you think then you have never put yourself in the employer's shoes. I am an employer with a small business and I know that to get good people and to get them to do a good job I have to treat them well. There is a balance of power between the employers and employees that depends on supply and demand, like anything else in a free market.
Yes, because there are basic rules that all employers must follow. There is no equal balance of power, and for proof just look at the early 1900s in this country.
In a free society, I should not be forced by law to provide another person with a living, certainly not to any arbitrarily set standard that someone else sets. If the government wants to set the minimum standards then it should do it with taxpayers money so that this burden is spread evenly, instead of placing the burden on one particular group, the business owners/shareholders.
We already went down this road. Again, look at history to see how people will be treated unless we force companies to follow basic rules.
You have a company, and presumably in a form that provides some immunity to things like lawsuits, debt, etc. In exchange, you agree to be regulated, so that you can't use your company to destory people's lives and the environment.
That's not the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is when you have employees who come to work and do a good job without slacking off, and are then expected to work weekends because of mistakes made by management.
It treats people like commodities (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultimately, to the corporations, we are.
What is your life worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of mine worked a high tech job that required lots of flying to other cities and living out of a hotel room. He would spend weeks away from home, fly home for a weekend on occasion, then fly out again. One day he realized he was missing his little girl growing up and he was becoming a stranger to his family. After completing a particularly grueling job that took several months, he chose to take two weeks off and spend it with his wife and daughter. His boss thought otherwise because they had already booked him for another job. He flat out refused to go to it. They fired him. He took them to the labor board. They lost big time. My friend had documented every minute he had spent waiting in airports and in the air. Under California law those were paid times (at least they used to be). As he had never been paid for the travel time, they not only had to pay him, they had to pay a penalty to him. He's now much happier with a local job. He gets to have dinner with his family and sleep in his own bed. The pay is only slightly lower and he is much happier (and so is his family).
So what is your time worth to you? If you are willing to work unpaid overtime, then you put a very low value on your life. I flat out refuse to work unpaid overtime on a regular basis. Yes, I've occasionally put in a couple of extra hours, but this is the exception, not the rule. Typically, if an emergency requires me to work late, I'll leave early the next day (or come in late). If a project consistently requires overtime, management has not done their job. Either they didn't assign enough people to the project, or they set too short of a deadline. Improper planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on mine. One or two days of crunch time isn't a problem. Shit happens. But weeks or months of it is not acceptable and your project is NOT going to be on time because my life is worth far more. You say you'll fire me if I don't work unpaid overtime? Not a problem. Go ahead and fire me. We'll talk further in a hearing.
I should repeat this. Emergencies happen and require extra time. Failure to set a reasonable deadline (or changing the requirements at the last minute) is NOT an emergency. Also, if I'm expected to carry a pager and be on call, my salary better reflect that requirement. I don't get up at 3am to fix your server for free. At one job, they decided to stop authorizing overtime pay, so I changed nagios to never send out alerts outside of work hours. Five nines of uptime aren't free. In this case, management didn't have a problem with it. The systems did not need to be up 24/7. Oddly enough, an ecommerce job, where 24/7 uptime was essential, was least willing to make the investment to keep things running (thus one of the reasons I no longer work for them).
Re:get what you pay for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, the benefits of small companies shine through: If there's too much work, we either:
1) Roll in our piles of money,
2) Subcontract it, or
3) Turn down some jobs.
And we get to choose which option we want.
On the other hand, no matter what size company you are in, if you're working too much and/or not making enough money, you need to either improve your skills, change jobs, or change careers.
If you are intelligent, motivated, and willing to learn there is a good fit for you out there somewhere. It usually takes some hard work and sacrifice to find it and get your foot in the door though.
Compensation should absolutely be based on performance, not seat warming. That's the idea behind why we pay more senior people more, because we assume they perform better. The problem is we suck at rating performance.
This is why it often makes sense for people with extraordinary talent to start their own enterprises, as entrepreneurship does pay based on results.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm quite that good, and am happy to share the work, risk, and rewards with others at the moment.
Re:You mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
The times it doesn't hold true are when there are non-capitalist distortions to the system.
Such as when executives get exclusive control of their own pay.
Such as when corporations have the government passing laws to forbid overtime.
Such as when corporations pay no taxes, use local services, and get all the work done remotely by overseas workers.
The system is broken now.
Lack of overtime pay will fix itself because no one will enter such a field unless it pays well.
Re:Try science (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You mean... (Score:4, Insightful)
Walking away from the largest bank failure in history after only 3 weeks on the job with 20 million dollars in hand!
Sure ardent capitalists like to point out the failings of socialism without ever looking at the success stories (e.g. every Nordic country) without ever looking at the downside to uncontrolled libertarian capitalism. Which is this.. the stabilization point for it closely resembles what we see today: The top 1% of capital holders control everything and basically treat the rest of us peasants like cattle, not because they do anything special, but simply because they hold all the cash. They're a rich boys club. It's not class envy. I don't envy anybody if I can help it, especially people who earn their money. But I'm furious about stories like Alan Fishman's. He gets 20 million for doing nothing except being part of the club. No matter how hard you work, or how smart you are you will NEVER be part of the club. Hell even Bill Gates had to have about 10 billion in the bank before he got some kind of "honorary guest member" status in "the club". I'm still not sure he's even in "the club". It seems like actually EARNING your money is held against you by "the club".
But if you're some asshat moron legacy at an Ivy League, and your neighbors play golf with board members and CEOs, do you think your C minus average and your intolerable personality means you'll end up serving french fries? Yeah right. You won't even need a trust fund. Just a set of golf clubs and the right clothes so you can join in.
Capitalism has done much for this world, but like everything, it has a lifespan. It's evolved into a shell game (played with capital) won through backroom handshakes, business dinners, sleazy marketing, and the right friends. You're not even in the game, you're just a tiny plastic resource on the board.
You can call it class envy, but a lot people just want a chance to play the game.
Bottom line: We want a lot more meritocracy and a lot less oligarchy.
Capitalism might be totally great, if every 50 years we took all the capital, divided it up evenly, and then carried on with capitalism again. As it is, it's a bad game of Monopoly that never ends. You just keep rolling the dice and landing on somebody's hotels, over and over, as they build more, and you hope for a Chance card.
Pfft.
Re:It's time to start a union how long before more (Score:3, Insightful)
"My point was that if your work environment is sub-satisfactory, you're a technology worker, and you're good at your job, you can go find a new job with conditions you approve of without too much trouble. Not that you need to work insane hours and give up your family life."
That demands on a lot of factors. Economy, location, companies not needing to treat you like a human.
The bubble burst, and it was very hard to find work for a number of years, and with the way unemployment is going, software developers may not have this luxury much longer.
Now it's funny you bring up strawman, becasue:
A) the poster who repliud to you did NOT use a strawman.
B) You post DID use a strawman.
"The only reason to start a union is if you're too lazy to go find a new job, or your skills are too poor to think you can get one"
That is a strawman.
I'm not lazy, and according to my peers,I am very good.
I am also in an engineers union. Why? becasue skill often has very little reason why you are let go from a company, becasue I want good healthcare, becasue I want to get compensated when I work OT.
I played the corporate gig for a very long time, and quite frankly I had enough.
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the effect of many of these laws is not "equal." In many cases it's damn near impossible to fire someone from a protected class where you would have instantly fired a person of a non-protected class.
I'm not saying the intention is bad, but the implementation certainly has its downsides.
Another father says "Amen" (Score:2, Insightful)
Please ignore the frat-boy supermen and sad divorced bastards who are currently razzing you for this comment. I just wanted to stand in support of this post.
I've worked since I was fifteen (yes, illegally, shocking I know). I've supported myself since I was seventeen, starting out with a stint of homelessness. I paid for my own college. I hit every single damn step on the ladder. It took decades.
It's simple. If you don't want the next generation to be raised as feral animals, then Mom and Dad need to be involved in their life. Absentee parents mean children go looking in the wrong places for love and guidance.
As a society, our choices are clear. We can either allow parents the time to care for their children, or we can build prisons and pay in excess of $50,000 a year to care for that child for the rest of their life, to say nothing of the carnage they'll cause on the way there.
I'm tired of listening to clueless jackasses. Children are not a "consumption choice." They are not "crotchfruit." They are literally, whether they're your kids or someone else's, your future. Twenty years from now, those children will be crossing your path, and they can either do it as your smiling waiter or your grinning mugger knifing you for the fun of it.
I'm tired of listening to milk-fed idiots talking about the harsh realities of life when they've never missed one meal or spent a single night on concrete. My patience wears thin with Social Darwinists with 40 percent body fat.
Having a child is not the moral equivalent of a trip to Cancun. Making sure our next generation gets raised right is more important than Larry Ellison's next yacht.
Re:You mean... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's not forget which country has the highest standard of living, and the highest per capita income. It's not resource rich UAE or Saudi Arabia, but us in America. If having a super wealthy class of people is the price we have to pay for near universal prosperity, I'm willing.
No one in this country needs to starve to death, and if anyone on this board were to have all of their possessions taken from them and dumped on a street corner of any town or city in the country in their underwear, the chance they'd stay at the absolute bottom of the socio-economic ladder approaches 0. We have high inequality, but also high mobility opportunity. I own a home despite being raised in the projects. I paid my own way through college, staying debt free. In America, there is opportunity aplenty, and that opportunity springs from the abundance of a free market economy.
As far as being in the super-wealthy club, you're right that we allow inherited wealth to have a large impact. The alternative is an estate tax that encourages the wealthy to consume near the end of life rather than produce. All things considered, I'd prefer that the people who produced their wealth keep control over their wealth. Even if that means hiring the asshat 2nd cousin of some other CEO. They will pay the price for their decisions, because the invisible hand will reward those who provide the most benefit. You are right that it rewards those who help those who have the most. But their is no better way to encourage wealth creation. And Free market economics is the best system anyone has ever discovered for creating wealth.
Without an engine that rewards production, the amassing of wealth must come from a zero-sum game. You have to take someone else's wealth. Under a free market economy, you get to trade something of less value to yourself for something of more value to yourself. The catch is that everybody gets to do this and some people have more things of value to trade. Those people end up ahead, because they deliver more value to others.
We have a whole lot of meritocracy. Look at the list of billionaires Forbes publishes every year and see how many of them are new, and how many are self-made. I will never be a billionaire, but there's a very good chance I will go from having inherited nothing to being a millionaire by the time I die, all without ever having to fear death by starvation. If that's not enough opportunity for you, I don't know what is.
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
You know damn well that everything on that list has happened multiple times except the overtime law.
And you know equally well that the corruption of an unrelated bill to the purpose of outlawing overtime required a lot of corporate lobbying.
And as it has been reported multiple times, the laws are most often *written* by the corporations and just put into law by the legislatures without even changing a word. We can thank Microsoft Word, "Track Changes" for that (before they got wise to this gotcha).
In addition, the right to strike by workers has been cut to pieces by a series of laws. Unions are almost toothless any more.
Not that I'm a fan of unions--powerful unions are as bad as powerful executives for abuse. Unions are basically responsible for the death of the U.S. automobile industry. They and the executives plundered the industry for personal gain. The executives were smarter and took their money up front while the unions took promises of later compensation which wasn't realistic.
Corporations regularly agree to settle in an area in exchange for paying no local taxes. They chew up the roads, plow over the land, and then leave the second the tax immunity expires leaving a wasteland for others to deal with.
Re:get what you pay for.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
"Democrats are joiners; they consider groups rather than individuals; they believe that centralized power in the hands of a large organization is the best way to run things, while the peons have no responsibility for themselves. - by XanC (644172) on Friday September 26, @03:07PM (#25170003)
Whew... what a CROCK OF CRAP: You've completely described the republican "frat boy" mentality, to a tee (as well as their "hanger on'ers" expecting to be 'favored' by this type of sycophantic 'yes man' behavior).
You had to have been sarcastic here, thus your "expecting to be modded down", but instead, you were modded up as funny - because what you wrote is a complete crock of shit.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
While this has nothing to do with labor laws such as overtime exemptions, I feel compelled to correct some misconceptions of yours.
Banks, in an effort to make money have been gradually giving higher and higher value loans to people with relatively stagnant income. This was magnified by the fact that stupid consumers, often those with insufficient or bad credit, have been using their homesteads as short-term credit cards. They bank on the fact that the value of their house will go up to compensate for their lack of spending control.
While you may be right(sort of) about the demographics of those people, it had nothing to do with affirmative action. This is what happens when greedy banks deal with desperate and/or uninformed homebuyers.