The result will screw some people for whom the arrangement (contractor / exempt) works will, will make the paperwork tedious, but will overall help most workers.
People gaming the system just cause Bastiat loss.
But at my current company, they will eventually get the new title, not sure of a raise though. Maybe at that company it is kind of a trial.
"The solution, then, is to pay the low-status workers a bit more than they are worth to get them to stay. The high-status workers, in contrast, accept lower pay for the benefit of their lofty positions."
The consequence of this is job title inflation.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of...
If the employee feels like they are being promoted, instead of actually getting a title change and raise, then they will likely not leave.
Like I can see putting up with a title change that comes with a small raise if there is new work that is more interesting and the new role opens up a better pay band, but I can't see why the title itself would motivate someone for very long at all.
Money isn't the only form of compensation a job can provide. Give a low level worker a $0.43 cent raise, and they won't give a crap, it's not enough to change anything. But give them an 'employee of the month' medal and a new title, arguably worth much less than $0.43 cents, and they may actually prefer it! It's something for their resume, something to tell their mother about, these things adds prestige and dignity to a hard job that may have none.
Meanwhile, "employee of the month bagging groceries and promotion to sr. Bagger" doesn't mean much, but a higher level person is likely to value something like a title bump that they use on their resume to get the next job.
Some people, however misguided they may be, don’t think like we do though
Yeah, tell me about it.
I recommend checking out Hillel Wayne's series where he interviews what he calls "crossovers", people that worked both in software and in traditional engineering: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/
Edit: also, there's some muddy waters where you have a degree in engineering (civil, chemical, etc.) but aren't technically an "engineer" unless you have state certification, which is a separate process; but you would nevertheless consider yourself an "engineer"
They withheld my last paycheck when I quit and stopped responding to my calls so I had to file with the PA labor board, I sent in those paystubs and answered questions about the role and what I did there. Couple weeks later they send me a check for 20 grand out of the blue, the business had to pay back overtime becuase I was misclassifed. I was just looking for the $300 or so they owed me, was really surprised with the outcome.
Glad this ended up working out in your favor. Your story makes me wonder how often such a practice doesn't end with the employer forking up the 20 grand they stole. I guess I've heard it said that wage theft is the most common form of theft but this is still rather frustrating to think about.
Does this sort of practice come with some other punishment or does the board just tell the employer to pay what's owed?
In PA they have to pay double whatever is collected, so they wrote a similar check to the labor board, that's how they are funded and I think it's revenue positive.
As gp showed, most people are not fully aware of their labor rights, and when they are, may not know the remedies available to them. Wage theft is endemic because of information asymmetry.
If a company steals $300 from the employee, the people in charge - the CEO - should have the same fate. It would solve the problem pretty quickly.
WOW. That’s a nice surprise.
the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization.
To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...
Year later, the day before I gave my two weeks, my boss told me I was becoming known as an 8 to 5 guy... I wasn't working enough extra hours. After I told him that he wasn't paying me enough to waste my life away at the job, he wasn't too surprised when I gave my notice the next day.
Jail is a huge motivating factor and why you don’t see wide spread accounting fraud in public companies.
This isn't a new concept at all. Professional engineers have similar levels of risk if they breach ethics, though I don't know if it's criminal or just self regulatory and civil.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/nsa-contractor-pleads-gui...
Making offering not enough money to someone a criminal offense sounds like a dangerous ground to stand on.
This is not what would be illegal. Wage theft is actual theft in the sense that they knowingly have something (and even sometimes attempt to retain the something) which is legally not theirs. Yes, the worker should quit. Yes, the worker should go after what's owed them. These things aren't mutually exclusive.
Any work more than 8 hours in a day should result in overtime pay regardless of type of work or base salary.
It’s ridiculous that companies can force people to work 24/7 with no extra pay just because those people happen to work with computers or in "knowledge" work.
And even developers/IT folks are largely not making FAANG money. They're working at hospitals/insurance companies making the equivalent of what a factory worker made in the 1950s.
They found that the incidence of fake-sounding manager titles spiked at the legal threshold of $455 a week — exactly the cutoff at which a company would be allowed to put workers on salary and sidestep OT payment laws.0: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime
"However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees... Job titles do not determine exempt status. In order for an exemption to apply, an employee’s specific job duties and salary must meet all the requirements of the Department’s regulations."
"Self employed" is used in the same way. Many people in the gig-economy are just employees that are not legally hired because companies want to avoid any responsibility while still profiting from employees.
Additionally there is a limit on the ratio of managers to employees, if it's too high can get you in trouble with the labour board. When my company opened an office here, the first thing they did was hire the managers who then hired the team below them - but due to the limit not everyone could have the manager title at first.
That probably accounts for some of the VP titles. I kinda doubt that all the VPs in your average BofA office are always signing things, and couldn't possibly just go to their boss for a signature, like normal people do.
Banks aren't trying to stiff their traders out of overtime. They do it because a VP has certain signing power as an executive that regular employees don't.
have been through this many times and very HR department on the sell and buy side says the same thing.
Then you might see another leader (Manager of Managers, or “MoM”) who has 5 of these small-team managers, a different title, but a total organization size of 10-15 people.
This feels like a shift from a generation ago when the bigger technology companies wanted flatter organizations and most managers would have teams of 8-12 people, the MoM roles might be 50-80 people, and beyond that executive roles with 100s of people.
Apparently, one day, he threatened to quit for another offer. He was placated with some trivial pay increase and promotion to lead engineer (essentially leap-frogging the other seniors in the office in title - but not in pay).
Except no announcement was made; I had no idea he'd been promoted. One day he walks into my office and starts telling me I need to redesign some module using XYZ Design pattern.
"Nope, don't think so - that would be a pointless and unnecessary complication and we have a release on Friday."
"No, you need to do it. I already talked to the Engineering Manager."
I can't remember exactly what I said next, but it wasn't very nice.*
Then I'm getting called into the Engineering Manager's office: "Can you just do the thing he asked you to do, please? I know, I know... we kinda have to humor him on this."
* - of course I remember what I said, and it definitely wasn't nice.
I’m sorry… what? Why did they feel the need to placate a junior at all, let alone with a leap-frog promotion? In what way was a junior engineer not replaceable? Was he someone’s cousin or something?
You could have this flexibility with accrued PTO. I've previously given employees additional, off-the-books time off because they needed and deserved it and when we all got laid off they still got the remaining PTO paid out.
Edit: add section on flexible alternative
Bill Smith: “It's what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.” [1]
1. “State and Main”, by David Mamet
The sheer hypocrisy is mind-blowing!
They ran a call center for merchant credit cards. Every associate on the floor had the title of "account manager." That way, when a customer whose request for a credit limit increase was declined or who had some other complaint asked to "speak to a manger," the low-wage associate could reply "Sir/Ma'am, I AM a manager."
From a business perspective, this seems like a sort of a penny-wise, pound-foolish decision because an employee who has a fancy "Director of X" title is probably more likely able to find employment elsewhere because of their fancy job title. In the long run, a company will probably pay more through having somebody swap jobs, having to pay extra to poach somebody, and pay for recruitment and training.
Somehow I feel the companies are not the problem here. That exemption is pretty ridiculous to have in the first place. Regardless of these "fake" managers, why don't "real" managers deserve OT pay?
Eventually getting to know the union rep it was widely accepted they had added "Manager" to the title of every salaried employee so they didn't have to pay overtime, could call you in after hours, etc.
It made us smile when even 18 year old call centre people had "Manager" in their title on their first day at their first job.
Also, some posters here have said that simply working in IT makes the job exempt. Not true.
Source: family member formerly worked in this field.
$250K for 35hrs a week at a casual company vs $375K at a 996 ByteDance, I know which side of that equation I'd choose.
When a baby with birth problems arrived for poor Jerry, it cost him more than a year's salary.
Florida academia and pay fuckery, name a more iconic duo. FIU Alumni and Ex-Employee Here.
The fact is the majority of the work day is wasted, just like I waste ghz all the time because it's cheap, why wouldn't employers waste your time if it's free?
Employment "at will" means either the employer or employee can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
If an employees took the same amount of money it would be theft, so illegally not paying that amount is a very similar crime.
When I worked at a government contractor this was part of the deal. Any more than 48 hours a week and you'd get all your time over 40 paid as OT where they converted your salary to an hourly rate.
I got a job at an agency afterwards. I immediately understood why Hollywood production jobs are so serious about their time. You can make your grips work through lunch or dinner, but it's gonna cost you money. I would have loved that deal, but how are you gonna unionize an office like that? It's a lot.
But to make up for this I am also compensated several times the median household income. And the threshold for paying people like me should definitely be set to at least 2x the median household income for the region in which you work or 2x the federal average whichever is more. Currently, that'd be a minimum of $141K/yr. I feel that's a reasonable cutoff for no more overtime pay.
This is why work from home was such a boon. Finally i could have shower thoughts on company time. Finally I could get away from the incompetent coworkers who kept asking me to do their job for them... some days I'd literally help others till 5PM and then start my job when they went home. And then my boss would say "You missed your delivery" and Id be like yea, but the 10 people who cant function without me hit theirs... Somehow that lesson wasn't part of their MBA.
(I'm always happy to help those who are truly trying and willing to do the work!)
Never again will I fall into that trap.
You can go become a senior or lead developer in some companies with only two years of experience, but the head of the local very large international airport is a director.
Some of these laws hurt unions, others help.
For example, a union contract can’t require an employer to hire only union members.
That would create a situation where people would apply to the union first, and if they union accepted them, then they apply for the job.
That would give unions too much power, so it’s not allowed.
Another law forbids sympathy strikes. Unions can only strike against their own employers, not in sympathy with other strikers.
Modern labor law also seeks to discourage strikes by using a war-game like approach to negotiating. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. But certainly not something that happens for non-union orgs.
If we adopted a “hands off” approach to unions, we could easily wind up with insanely powerful unions.
If 2% of the working population went on strike simultaneously, the economy would stop working quickly.
So general strikes are very illegal, even though they are 100% in accord with libertarian ideology.
It's pretty well-known that the point of an internship isn't to actually accomplish any useful work, it's to determine which students you would like to extend an offer to for full-time employment. Not a large leap to assume that a lot of adolescent employment follows this pattern. The wages you'd pay a teen are chump change for most businesses, but responsible, intelligent, trustworthy employees basically disappear from the job market after their first job (because everybody wants to keep them), and so it can be a great investment to identify, vet, and introduce yourself to them before they're on the open market.
That's exactly the thing I'd hope to see. It's unfortunate that it's such a process, considering how easy it is to simply not know.
I think in California, even illegals are eligible for workers compensation.
> The Department increased the standard salary level from $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to $913 per week ($47,476 per year) in a final rule published May 23, 2016 (“2016 final rule”). That rulemaking was challenged in court, and on November 22, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas enjoined the Department from implementing and enforcing the rule. On August 31, 2017, the court granted summary judgment against the Department, invalidating the 2016 final rule because it “makes overtime status depend predominately on a minimum salary level, thereby supplanting an analysis of an employee's job duties.” Nevada v. U.S. Dep't of Labor, 275 F. Supp. 3d 795, 806 (E.D. Tex. 2017).
The current standard salary level is $35,568.
> When applied to updated data, these methodologies result in a standard salary level of $684 per week ($35,568 per year) and an HCE total annual compensation level of $107,432. Finally, the Department intends to update these thresholds more regularly in the future.
> The Department estimates that in 2020, 1.2 million currently exempt employees who earn at least $455 per week but less than the standard salary level of $684 per week will, without some intervening action by their employers, gain overtime eligibility. The Department also estimates that an additional 2.2 million white collar workers who are currently nonexempt because they do not satisfy the EAP duties tests and currently earn at least $455 per week, but less than $684 per week, will have their overtime-eligible status strengthened in 2020 because these employees will now fail both the salary level and duties tests. Lastly, an estimated 101,800 employees who are currently exempt under the HCE test will be affected by the increase in the HCE total annual compensation level.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/09/27/2019-20...
"To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $684* per week." as of January 1, 2020. It was at the previously mentioned value before that.
So that's $17.10/hr to be a manager, or about $35k / year.
Federally: Currently, the salary threshold for exempt employees is $684 a week ($35,568 annualized) https://www.fisherphillips.com/news-insights/planning-2023-c...
That's not correct. Being employed at will means that you _can_ be let go for refusing a promotion (or just about any other reason) but it doesn't mean that automatically happens. There are plenty of companies that understand that some people reach a point where they don't care about climbing the ladder anymore and don't want to take on more responsibility.
Every now and again someone whose spent a career exclusively in finance gets bitten by this when transitioning into the business world. A friend once told me a story about a deal with Amazon nearly getting tanked when I coworker chewed out an Amazon VP, saying they wanted to "talk to someone who could make decisions". Took a lot of massaging to salvage that deal.
edit: added quotation marks to just. I like being an IC.
This is far from simply offering a low wage from the beginning.
Wage theft is illegal. It should be treated as a legal issue where the state gets involved and uses its monopoly on force to enforce the law. That's what the state is there for.
[Aside, putting violence at the same level as unions: I've been around a union, while working in a factory in the midwest US, that had "kneebreakers" that "encouraged" members to vote a certain way by threat-of-force, support certain candidates for union leadership, and used the Union to blatantly extort local businesses and politicians. Not every union is like this, but blue-collar unions in the US have a history of going this way. Which, even tho I like unionization in theory and cheer a bit inside when I see union action at e.g Starbucks or Amazon, I have seen a very terrible union and so they scare me.]
In this case, the union was a giant ball of mud whose only existence was to hold the government hostage.
As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
"Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles" is fraud. If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like , how much do you hate companies were you have thousands of examples of bad behavior?
> As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
I do not know what concept do you have about unions, but it seems come from anti-union propaganda and not from any reasonable definition of what a union is. Unions gave us the eight hour work week, vacations and many more rights. That is not "overlord" behavior but being able to negotiate with powerful corporations.
Not the person you are replying to, but I think discounting the behavior of unions as one-off is not helping. The examples I have are from outside US though - there are entire states where union presence is strong. Those states had a good industrial sector but over several decades the unions made it so problematic for the industries there that majority of businesses moved to states where there were no unions. Public calls for "strikes" and other work-stopping behavior and violence is common occurence in those states. So the risk of a union becoming mafia-like is more than just propaganda - it has plenty of examples worldwide in several countries.
My experience with unions was they were shady, jobs were given out based on nepotism, work was given out solely based on seniority and most work you did for them involved kickbacks.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4...
Because it is not going anywhere, they had an independent body get involved, their commentary says it all:
"The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners."
These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place?
The contract they signed was for "IN_PERSON" work, so they are simply being asked to do what they signed up for prior to COVID.
Huh? They fight against contract changes they don't like, and don't fight against contract changes they do like? Sounds pretty crazy to me.
Its a negotiation. The union asking for the highest number it can get is what its supposed to do.
There is however a third choice, which is government regulation. Unfortunately government regulations can't adapt as quickly as a union can to changes.
Maybe the relatively inflexibility of regulation is what is needed to maintain a minimum necessary commitment to living wages and reasonable benefits though.
Just like planes which survived battles only had bullet marks on their wings.
Such as labor boards, or rather the government that gives them power.
Companies have a lot of flexibility in deciding how the accruals work. But, as you said, the important part is that when it accrues, at that point it's a legally-obligated right for you to either receive that time or be paid for it.
In this sort of environment, I've never seen a company claim "unlimited".
how does that work?
I generally try to work at places that value my contributions but do not try to micromanage me. If I want/need to take time off, I do. If at some point I'm taking off so much time that they no longer feel that I'm contributing enough to the company, then fine they can let me go.
My working class family members (all in the same trade) universally hate unions and their reasons are quite reasonable; my grandfather was in union leadership until he was run out by the mob and my cousin had to pay tribute (e.g a protection racket) to the new leadership.
Recently he had to go on medical leave. When he was ready to go back to work he had to take a physical. He had to go a week without pay until the results of the physical came back. It is total bullshit but he didn’t have a Union to back him and not worth it to sue.
Update: He’s only had a few of these issues in his career, so maybe the union dues he would have paid outweighed the cost of getting stiffed. Adding this because my point wasn’t that unions are awesome, but they can have value… the question is at what cost.
By the time she retired in 21st century, she hated her union.
She particularly hated their support for Obamacare. They had an exception so it didn’t affect their agreements. But that ignored the fact that the nurses had to actually implement it.
It was an administrative clusterf*ck. Nurses spent hours listening to consultants telling them how to improve patient reviews, which were now tied to compensation.
The unions were like “the Democrats now owe us, so we will get paid back down the road.”
She literally quit over that.
The reality is that you are adding a lot of extra 'management' on top of the existing company management when you bring in a union. At the end of the day, a union is a business and it is a profit-seeking business. Employees have to raise a massive fuss and get momentum from members in the union to receive any sort of defense from the union for their grievances.
The rotation aspect is also annoying. If you enjoy a particular job, you are forced to rotate out so that other members can have a chance. The juiciest roles always seem to go to the senior members. If you an apprentice, you just have to take what you get, and endure whatever hazing, teasing, and abuse you receive (tech workers jaws would hit the floor if they witnessed what I lived through).
At the end of the day you have to remember that there is one pie. Everyone wants a piece of the pie... management, employees, and union. Adding more overhead and more bosses is not always an effective way of getting more pie to the employees.
I think there's some truth to the old adage that there's a class of Americans, especially represented among the HN crowd that "see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
There are many reasons for the decline of organized labor in the US. Some cultural yeah, but just as much, if not more, legal...
"Right to work" legislation
Employers fighting harder against unionization
Decreased enforcement of labor laws
Judges (including SCOTUS) who keep striking down labor protections
Media portrayal of unions
source?
People are being bled dry by unsustainably high interest rates and housing costs due to the insatiable appetites of big business.
High tech and Hollywood generated huge money, and Wall Street style money was always anti-Union. It is worth saying that Hollywood movie production is very heavily unionized, and that small system works pretty well.
Every system is only as good as the people in them.
Only relevant in a spirit-like sense, but reading this line immediately reminded me of this scene in Intolerable Cruelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw
>source?
>> If wages matched the increase in housing prices alone
Ah. I thought you meant wages were low relative to other countries, when they are actually among the highest.
This is sort of the nature of inflation though, prices increasing faster than wages- but there is a feedback loop, as increasing wages increases prices.
> People are being bled dry by unsustainably high interest rates
Asset price inflation is probably more driven by low interest rates. Higher rates should bring down asset prices, ceteris paribus.
You tell us, is a 47% increase in pay "normal"?
why did the body intended to help with the negotiations write this:
The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners.
Maybe. Depends on what the value they provide is.
In the tech industry, getting a 47% raise by job hopping to a new job that does the exact same thing, isn't unheard of, so it seems entirely plausible it could be justified. If it actually is in this case, i don't know, but its not crazy on its face.
Beyond his political vision, Black attempted to compete directly with Kenneth Thomson's media empire led in Canada by The Globe and Mail, which Black and many others perceived as the platform of the Liberal establishment.
--wikipedia
Is your point that you can copy/paste from wikipedia and provide no actual commentary??
Given that PSAC are asking for 4.5% raises during a period of high inflation I’m skeptical that this is that unreasonable rather than that there’s political hay to be made claiming it is. If they haven’t had cost of living increases for a while, they’ve already effectively had a pay cut.
Assuming that you did not read the article, I am not stating it is unfair, the independent board they engaged to help with the negotiations stated this.
Many people lost their jobs and had to take pay cuts during COVID, why are federal employees exempt from market forces?