IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules

bjarvis354 writes "The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting that the Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao unveiled new rules that seem to specifically target IT workers and other white collar workers for exemption from overtime pay. The Oneonta Daily Star claims that 'According to new exemption tests, the employee isn't guaranteed overtime pay if primary duties involve office or non-manual work,' and 'Computer employees are not guaranteed overtime pay if they make $455 a week, or if their hourly rate is $27.63. Affected employees include computer systems analysts, programmers, software engineers or anyone with a similar title.'"

Video Game testing

[Rize]

What about video game testing? That sounds white collar...

wait just a second here

[theMerovingian]

You mean we were supposed to get overtime pay BEFORE they passed this law?

whew..

[dogas]

Boy, am I glad I don't make $27.63 an hour.

WTF?

[MadBiologist]

Why in God's name is slashdot quoting the Oneonta Daily Twinkle? I mean... my God.. can we get a smaller town paper to read for national tech news?

Can you tell that I lived in Oneonta for a while?

J

What is this thing called overtime?

[Ian Wolf]

Oh yeah, thats that "time and a half" thing I use to get before I was salaried.

I've been salaried so long now, I stopped lamenting paid overtime ages ago. Unfortunately, this means my wife's already meager paycheck is gonna get leaner.

Great.

Re:Well...

[elwell642]

Does anybody else remember their professors telling them that a field in computer science would almost guarantee large paychecks and job security?

I'm starting to think that such comments were only guaranteeing the professors large paychecks and job security...

figures . . .

[uberjoe]

Another astounding success in the Bush Administration's No Billionaire Left Behind program.

Re:whew..

[Jackazz]

I think you meant "Boy, am I glad I make $27. 64 an hour!"

In other news

[cexshun]

In other news, the Department of Labor is experiencing strange outages with their network, website, and all IT related systems.

I can see it now...

[Frennzy]

PHB: Mr. Frennzy, we'd like to offer you employment. Your base wage will be $27.65 per hour.

Me: No WAY man! I won't take a penny over $27.62 per hour.

Thankfully, it's not an issue if you're self-employed.

Re:Only 100,000 people affected?

[VoidPoint]

That's the number of IT people left in the U.S. This law doesn't apply to outsourced positions.

No, it's accurate.....

[Genjurosan]

Because by the time the CEOs are finished, there will be less than 100,000 IT workers in the US.

Slashback....

[telstar]

I guess we've got our answer for this guy [slashdot.org]. Cliff, don't take a penny more than $27.62 an hou, then work a 90 hour work week.

Re:It's not new - for salary workers

[Hrothgar The Great]

Yeah, I see a lot of factory workers posting on Slashdot at 12:58 PM.

Also, one time I totally strained my back typing on my keyboard all day.

If that's the language...

[Muad'Dave]

they really use, we're all safe. I'm not a "Computer Employee," I'm a human employee that works with computers. I don't care what the Computer Employees get - probably WinXP if they're naughty.

Re:OTOH

[Analogy Man]

If they would just loosen up the labor laws some more I could put my 4 kids to work! That along with less restrictive emissions standards and they could work right in the back yard melting down old computer hardware from failed .COM's and companies that outsourced there operations offshore.

Let's get government off corporate America's backs and into people's bedrooms where it belongs!

Re:Well...

[flamingnight]

I just asked my manager about this. He said
"That guy is full of shit. The Peter Principle is shit. And... (sniffle) well... (tearing up) Oh my God I hate my job and my life. I wish I were back to being a Technician instead of a manager!"

Hm.
Off to console him.

Re:Actually, actually, I'm confused.

[Jaysyn]

And like everything else in this govenment, no one know exactly what the fuck is going on at any given moment.

Jaysyn

Re:who is hurt by new rules

[himself]

queequeq1 wrote:
One of the primary stated motives for the new rules was to update 50 year old Department of Labor rules that made it very difficult to determine exactly who was and was not eligible for overtime because the rules referred to positions that for the most part don't exist anymore (e.g. straw men and keypunch operators).

What? I see straw men all *over* the Internet, especially in Slashdot discussions. I thought the rise of blogging practically guaranteed lifetime employment for any straw man who wanted it.

Can you say "cognitive dissonance"?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This coming from the same guys that wanted to classify ketchup as a "vegetable" on school lunches! (Well, Regean & co.)

Re:Well...

[kjd]

Off to console him.

I had to read that 3 times before I could get it to mean "comfort" and not "root tty". Time for a break...