IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules 1068
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.'"
If you don't get paid for something (Score:5, Insightful)
So refuse (Score:1, Insightful)
PHBs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Admittedly, I didn't RTFA, but that statements just SCREAMS for pointy-hairs to change the job titles of the people who they don't want to have to pay for overtime.
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
~S
"New" rule? (Score:5, Insightful)
That "new" rule is as old as IT : if you do your legal 40 hours per week in an IT company, you're out of here faster than you can say "antidisestablishmentarianism".
In the last company I worked for, a minimum of 60 hours per week was expected, sort of like an unwritten rule, often a lot more during death marches. I was well paid of course, and bonuses were huge, but in reality I had a really shitty hourly wage.
So what's new here? just that it's now a written rule that IT workers are slave workers. The only thing this does is diminish even further the impression of "privileged workers" non-IT folks have of us, and that's too bad because that's about the only glamour of the job.
Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't anything new... (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm working as an hourly employee, I'm going to bill my boss for every hour I spend working. At my full rate. If I'm lucky, maybe they'll agree to pay me time and a half for anything over 40 hours (or some other predetermined limit).
They can't make me work overtime hours and not pay me, unless I'm salary. Then I wouldn't expect it anyway.
Re:Don't you wish you were blue collar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you don't get paid for something (Score:5, Insightful)
if you "don't do it" as an individual, you'll get fired. however, if you "don't do it" as a group you'll have more power. if the entire i.t. staff decides to cease work until their is fair treatment, your chances of success is greater.
that's right: i'm talking union.
No better in Canada.... (Score:4, Insightful)
My current job has the best "overtime" policy that I've had thus far, in that lieu time off is calculated on overtime hours * 1.5. So we get time and a half OFF for the time we work. Not bad. Gives me at *least* one day off every 3 weeks.
So I have more time off, and no extra income to fork over to the gov't to misappropriate.
Bush administration (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is new how? (Score:4, Insightful)
2am pages are acceptable if they're rare and they're about real issues. It's when there starts being too many of them that things get messy.
work overtime for regieme change at home (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Republicans Hate Workers (Score:2, Insightful)
Name one. Chances are if they're in politics, they aren't in line with your goals.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
Overtime is an incentive for employers to HIRE people rather than working the one's they have to death.
It is incentive which recognizes that the market if left to itself will gobble up all the dedicated people who don't have kids and can work weekends and evenings and leave the people who carry the real burden of society (yes parenthood) unemployed.
Where there is no negative pressure on expliotation - people will sign up for expliotation rather than get left behind and starve - that is a comment on world experience over time - your mileage may vary (but not by much)
AIK
Re:If you don't get paid for something (Score:0, Insightful)
And I am throwing a nice tight rope for you over the nearest lamp-post, where "union-talking" people belong. A possibility of making a mistake -- my reason to object to death penalty -- is not an issue with such people. They'll keep "talking union" all the way to the hanging...
Seriously, though, trade-unions are no better, indeed, indistinguishable from other monopolies and should be treated with anti-trust laws. In some, more extreme cases, anti-racketeering laws may apply too...
Re:Don't you wish you were blue collar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the *idea* was good, the *implementation* of said idea was seriously borked. And in the end, it destroyed a lot of good companies.
How do you like Bush now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now there's a hard-hitting new pimp in town and things aren't quite so nice.
How much more of this FUCKED UP REPUGNANT SHIT is it going to take before people wake up? We're the ones who run the machinery here during this all-important war effort. What are they going to do if we won't work, for free, conscript us?
Uh... Don't answer that.
memo from managment: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see this as a great opportunity for tech sweatshops to own their employees free time. My guess is the federal gov't wants to get out of paying contractors overtime fees?
Re:Don't you wish you were blue collar? (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I've worked construction. You'd pry my ergonomic mouse from my cold, pastey hand before I went back. You're just laborer, paid to break your body for someone else. The mentallity of your supervisors and coworkers is worlds apart from IT. It's a mind-numbing and spirit-crushing existance. I've been used and abused in IT too, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't even compare.
Your talk of 6-figure incomes is BS. I've know only handful of people who have done that well; it's only because they work more overtime than should be humanly possible. Every single one is an alcholic who has to pause a moment to recall how old his own kids are.
Choose wisely.
An Opportunity Here (Score:5, Insightful)
The bosses in the corporate offices cannot have it both ways. If they want insanely high productivity, they are going to have to pay for it. Even workers in India will eventually cost as much as here for the same work output. So let's stop this madness and live our lives like human beings instead of 24/7 machines. Let's spend more time with our friends and family. Or perhaps more time actually getting friends and family!
blessing? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] the Peter Principle: Everyone will rise to a level of incompetency. Basically, you'll get one promotion too many and end up in a job you are incompetent to do. He's dead now, but look up some of his books. The hold true even today.
No reason to thank the unions (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it will, because a "living wage" is an arbitrary concept that has nothing to do with the value of the work. If you muck with wages this way, you are telling the company to do all it can to make do with fewer workers, or get out entirely. Let the market determine the wage, not meddling Washington bureaucrats.
Why Manual? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I work over time, chances are, that overtime is spent staring at a computer screen. I didn't need glasses until last year. I worked a lot of overtime last year.
why not blue collar too? (Score:1, Insightful)
Simple, blue collar workers are smart enough to set up unions to protect their interests.
In case you didn't notice there is some serious class war getting wages on IT workers but they don't care! They all have this "I'm too smart and skillz0red and special for it to happen to me! I'm different than those other saps!". With an attitude like that it's hard to really be upset about it although I will always be mad when I see workers getting the shaft but the attitude some of these primodanna assholes have makes it really hard to care sometimes...
Re:whew.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They could keep track of whatever variables they need to define these numbers so that the values defined in these laws stay resonable over time and through times of high and low economic prosperity.
The law should also define exactly what the various terms in the equation represent and the reasoning behind why they were chosen.
We have all these computers around, we should be using them to improve the way our government works, not just by giving government workers ever-more bloated versions of Word, but by improving the process by which laws are made and maintained.
Right now we hardcode all the values and 'recompile' every couple of years. Its dumb and a waste of taxpayer money and resources.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
I will say that could be a decent amount to live on, depending on your local cost of living. It costs a lot less to live in Po-Dunk-Town, Alabama than Birmingham, Alabama, and obviously less than New York or Boston. Basically, the IT worker in Po-Dunk-Town commutting to B-ham would probably do well, with the others forced to do a better job with their budget. With the basic idea that you will see more IT people in the higher cost areas, that is where you run into problems with this.
who is hurt by new rules (Score:3, Insightful)
To put a really cynical spin on these new rules, I believe that one of the groups that will be hit hardest by overtime rules with bright line requirements will be the employment law plaintiffs bar, which will be hindered in its efforts to troll for new highly profitable cases by representing highly compensated former employees who could conceivably still be eligible for overtime under the old rules Representing low-hourly wage employees isn't that huge a business because employee will often settle for some minimal amount that they need just to survice and which employers will often be willing to pay to avoid a trial - and a potential award of attorneys fees if the employee wins.
Get organized or get used to it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't you wish you were blue collar? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
-
We talk all high minded on slashdot thousands times a day every day 365 days a year. Is it all talk or do people here think that a Computer Professionals union is needed these days?
It's really a question of the lesser of two evils. Unions aren't exactly the great defenders of the workers they want you to believe they are. I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) what's happened with unions so that they've gotten out of control. I personally would rather avoid joining a union and take my chances as they stand now.How many engineers/IT workers get overtime pay? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people in this field get paid for overtime?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
This policy doesn not mean you can't be paid for overtime. It only says that your employer doesn't have to make it compaly policy to pay you for overtime.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Additionally, a large percentage of IT people tend more toward libertarian/objectivist philosophies, which despise labor unions as a tool of incompetence.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, auto workers, airline pilots, factory labour, etc. tend to work for a small number of companies with high fixed costs. There are IT people in every company, making negotiations and organization difficult.
Second, IT is a very diverse group. Tech support, code monkeys, developers, systems analysts/architects, network admins, management that still does code reviews/coding, etc. It's difficult to lump those positions together, or draw distinctive lines between all of them.
Third, skill as a programmer depends a lot on natural talent, and there's a lot of ego involved. There are lots of really gifted individuals who would rightfully object to being grouped in with people who took a six month course at the local community college.
Fourth, some of us are a lot more worried about our jobs than others. If you're doing helpdesk tech support you should be very worried. If you're spending most of your time meeting with users in person and doing design for a profitable company you're a lot harder to outsource, and have much more job security.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened is that you started (perhaps involuntarily) a new career at the same business, without any formal education. "Incompetent", while strictly true, carries a shade of meaning that isn't really fair. Imagine that your high school just got you a job as a sysadmin without ever offering any computing classes.
Now, I would agree heartily that if you are training for a career in X mainly because of the money, you are probably seeking the wrong job and you won't like it much.
BTW, those guys doing the same job every day for the next 30 years? those jobs are the ones now being outsourced to another continent. Stay flexible if you want to continue working.
(As for that "overqualified" jazz, I'm reminded of Art Buchwald's story about a nuclear physicist named Kase who kept dumbing down his resume' until he landed a job.)
BFD (Score:2, Insightful)
And don't try to tell me IT is anything like a sweatshop, no matter how much overtime you have, or how stupid the users you support are, how often the computers crash, or how hard it is to find a job. We have big asses and soft hands, and anyone who thinks it is like 19th century meatpacking, is a complete pussy.
Re:It's not new - for salary workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I may be presuming too much but I would think that a computer professional is likely smart enough to negotiate their own contract. If you aren't getting paid enough or you haven't negotiated an overtime scale than that's your fault. Why would you want to abdicate responsibility to a union anyway? Soon enough they will do something you don't like and than you have no way out.
I totally understand that market forces may be such that computer professional salaries are low due to over supply in the market. Artificially increasing the salary through unionization won't benefit you in the long run. Already I see people here complaining about off-shoring. Just wait until you have a union, the jobs will bolt like there's no tomorrow.
The best way to fight an over supply in your field is to train for a different field! Or simply be the best in your field.
Unions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No reason to thank the unions (Score:4, Insightful)
The other obvious thing worth pointing out, is that prices are set by supply and demand. Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour. Clearly the price set by the market is unworkable. If employers actually hired people when the price of labor was low to non-existant, then why haven't they hired all of the Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour? Why haven't they employed all of the people of Mexico, who are willing to work for whatever the market will bear? Oh wait, that's right, it's because everything you've said about employers hiring as many people as possible if the price is low enough is false.
You can still get overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are about to accept a job offer and they do not pay 1.5 for overtime, ask for it. If they refuse, suck it up or find another job. You don't need the government to mandate that they pay 1.5.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) that not joining a union will make gremlins fly out of your nose, make your wife/girlfriend/right hand leave you for a football jock and besides the unions will give your name to the Mafia and you'll be lucky if they only break your kneecaps.
I swear that's exactly what it said - only I can't remember exactly which book it was. It certainly was enlightening though.
Back on topic: of course there's going to be bad eggs in unions and some of them probably have got out of control. Guess what - there's employers like that as well. I'd rather have those unions there and employers realising that they can't gouge me quite so hard because my co-workers are willing to back me up. Politics goes where there's power, and I for one am glad that unions have enough power to influence things (while hopefully not gaining so much power that the bad apples take over - I think that's what you're talking about. Surprise, it happens everywhere with power, including politics in general if you haven't been following along at home).
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it would be more palatable if you did not call it a union. Call is an "association" like the doctors (AMA) and the lawyers (ABA) do. It does not seem so low class when you call your union an association. After all the people in unions drive chevys people in associations drive BMWs.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
So don't join the union. If you think you can make it on your own, go ahead. But the way things are looking, that's becoming increasingly more difficult.
Also, in my mind, IT is very different from software development. With IT is basically system maintenance, software design is entirely different. There can obviously be a bit of both in someone's job, but either way, this isn't terrible relevant: A union's members don't have to be homogenous. An auto-worker's union, for example, supports many different people with diverse job functions that may only be indirectly related to building automobiles.
You're outlining reasons why unionization of the IT sector hasn't been widespread, but I think the main one is this: it hasn't been threatened like it is now. When it gets to either unionize or die, I think we'll see a different picture.
Re:As the market fundamentalists like to say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Glad we've managed to avoid that...
Cynicism aside, labor unions have served an important role in the past in the U.S. and a few still do. Some of the largest, however, have serious problems because they have a leadership that is more concerned with keeping power than benefiting members. This, in turn, has made all unions look bad to a lot of people. Especially people that have never directly benefited from them.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
To do any good, a union occasionally has to strike. You might think twice about the attractiveness of unions when you have to decide between collecting a paycheck and walking a picket line...betting on the chance that the union will win and you get a raise, instead of having your job shipped to India. You ready to beat up the scabs (your ex-friends)? You ready to get the shit kicked out of you by management goons? Gonna put up with all the BS rules the union hierarchy imposes in addition to your employer's BS rules?
There are worse things than working extra hours for a PHB, so I think union talk is going to stay just that: empty talk. At least I hope so.
And why don't they just...? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where employment laws are heading anyways, or at least from where I've been standing. The days of unions are numbered. Bank on it.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you were part of such a union, you'd have a say in it. History seems to show (though I'm neither a historian nor in a union, so I'm not exactly an expert...) that unionized workers can, on the whole, get better employment terms than non-unionized workers. That's not to say that you, with your mad negotiating skills (which you may or may not possess; just an example) can't negotiate a better contract, just that for the majority of workers, the contract the union can get them is better than the one they could get on their own.
I've also heard some pretty stupid stuff that unions have done. However, a union is neither better nor worse than the people who make it up--which means that at worst, it can be a royal nuisance to the people in it and outright dangerous to the people not in it, employees and employers both. But you can always try to change it once it's there. Without it there, we won't have nearly as much clout as a group.
Dan Aris
Re:As the market fundamentalists like to say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
this is exactly why there needs to be a union for non-manangerial hourly employees. Most people I know how fit in that description (not myself, I'm salaried) are not in a position to be negotiating with an employer. There's a reason why they are working in $30k tech support jobs. Usually it is due to an inability to find other, better paying work. When it comes down to no job, or an hourly job for $30k, most people will take the job.
When you attempt to negotiate a raise, or more pay, and the response is "screw you, take it or leave it" most people don't have the option to leave it.
A union brings a balance of power to an employees ability to earn a livable wage. With no unions, and rules such as this, employees have no bargaining position.
These rules only hurt people who have the most to lose. And they don't 'help the economy', they only help those who don't need any more help, the business owners.
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only is the Story Wrong but even the thinking behind the ruling is wrong.
Overtime laws were set in place first during the 1930's to reduce labor supplies in order to maintain some price levels to prevent deflation. During World War 2 the US War Department (Now DOD) ran into a problem with productivity. They had very highly motivated workers who had been starved for money and who had family in the field fighting and dying. These workers wanted to win the war all by themselves THIS WEEK!
The problem developed that they bought the ideas behind the new rules that more hours of work ment more productivity. So they wrote contracts with companies that open endedly encouraged long hours. As soon as these began productivity spiked upwards and by the end of a month it had crashed to levels in the order of 50% or less of what productivity had been during the 8 hr/day 40hr/week times. The hours were pushing upwards to 100 or more a week so the US War Department did some serious studies on productivity.
Their research showed that after about 35 to 36 hours a week of work, no additional productivity could be sustained even working much longer. In factory line situations this was even worse as defect rates rose catastrophically. Simply stated the 40 hr work week was about 4 hours too long for human functionality. By 44 hours the situation was seeing rates of production drop dramatically. By 72 hrs nonfunctionality had happened.
Studies have been done of office workers on this issue and the numbers are even worse for them on hours of sustained productivity. The reality is that OVERTIME is no good for families, industry or profits! It is a good way to get programs or devices that fail. In offices where workers salaried are paid flat rates, we often see long periods of non-productive time because of this. The few "Workaholics" we see are mostly very busy but frankly most of them actually damage the production effort in the long run. Unfortunately they look good to management who often does not look to see where the money came from.
The whole ideals set for the Bush team is an early industrial revolution set of ideas that did not work. Their "Adam Smith" "Invisible Hand" theories do not work either. Their concept is that there is a shortage of labor. This is inspite of 80 years of American History showing that we have a profoundly dangerous over supply of labor both in the USA and world wide.
The Technolological progress many of us in IT are responsible for is actually increasing the world wide efficiency of the labor by about 12% a year. This is threatening to collapse the market all together. This is the "Jobless Recovery" that is still very much a reality. By the way, don't give me the crap about 308,000 jobs in March. It is probably a fiction anyway but assuming it is true, the USA must add nearly 360,000 jobs a month for static economic conditions to be maintained due to population changes. The USA must also increase income by about 3.5% per annum for the same reasons. It currently is seeing rises in income about 1%/annum which translates into a 2.5% cut in actual wages per average person.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, unionization is the corrollary to incorporation.
Corporations exist for one purpose: to protect and increase the profits of their shareholders. Unions exist for one purpose: to protect the jobs and compensation of their members. NEITHER has any direct interest in the consumer's environment; they only will improve things for consumers to the extent that such actions help achieve their primary goals.
Yet, somehow being profit-motivated is darn near sacred in this country, while unions are evil because they raise wages (and therefore cut into profit margins). I think there should be a better solution, but we haven't found it yet... so for the time being, I definitely support unions as a countermeasure to corporations. (Which doesn't mean I support every union's every action blindly; people make bad decisions. There are also corps that do *good* things, though.)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no different that trying to get a better price by buying in bulk at Sam's Club. Unions help to insure that workers do not take the brunt of volatility in a mature market. I don't recommend Unionizing new industries as soon as they show up. Individualism and laissez faire policies tend to help new industries, but can actually stop the formation of new industries around old ones.
There is no such thing as a free market in reality. There are always going to be factors that make the market non-free, reason says that you should find the best way to work within the system that exists. Unions, like Corporations, are simply a tool to better organize resources within society. Planned economies don't work, but lack of regulation can make a commoditized industry too volatile to build new industries on top of. How could you build a chip fab if there wasn't a stable and relatively inexpensive source of energy and pool of workers to run it?
Does this mean that this country's experience with Unions has been all roses? No, but neither has our experience with Corporations, yet lot's of people join Corporations, although the Corporation's alligiance is more to shareholders than workers. If you think of a Union as a Corporation who's shareholders are the members and who's customers are the Corporations the shareholders work for, it seems much more natural.
I personally think that this country has done a very good job of exploring the capabilities of capitalism and laissez faire policies. I also think that the progress and complexity of the economy and society we have built with these tools may need other tools and new tools to continue it's growth.
I like Roosevelt's VP Henry Wallace's quote: "Freedom in a grown-up world is different from freedom in a pioneer world. As a nation grows and matures, the traffic inevitably gets denser, and you need more traffic lights."
The idea is to strike balances so as to better the country as a whole without stepping on the rights of individuals. If the eletrical and telecom industries had not matured, it would have been much harder to develop the industries that are built on top of them.
Other countries understand these principles, especially India. That's why the rest of the world standardized on GSM (via regulation) in the cell phone world and why there are more applications, more widely available for cell users in the rest of the world. This country lost it's leadership in the cell industry, because it refused to mature the industry and grow new ones on top of it.
If you want to see the US continue the growth it has had, then we must be intelligent and rational about the tools we use to manage it. Capitalism vs. Socialism is a dead argument. Now we must compete with other countries who aren't still bound to the ideological struggles of the last century. Unions and mature industries are just part of the toolbox. If you don't like the way Unions have been run in the past, think about how you would do it in the future. Would an equivelent of the SEC for Unions help? What model of collective bargaining for labor would best reflect the types of jobs that are currently being commoditized?
Republican Porn (Score:3, Insightful)
I call bullshit on this one:
Bolding mine.
Note that nowhere in the editorial does that idiot quote anybody saying that those with incomes above the median are necessarily rich.
In fact, Kerry, among other Democrats, has taken great pains to point out that he favors a tax increase on only those household who take home more than $200K a year. Which, by any objective measure, is stinking fucking rich.
That entire editorial is full of shit, and if that's all the evidence you got, so are you.
What about consultants? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Most readers believe that they are special and unique. They won't be outsourced, they won't be replaced by a college student who has knowledge of new technologies, etc. Why join a union if your so amazingly good that you'll never need one?
2) For a board that loves to talk about economics, very few people seem to have any understanding of the field. Sorry to say it, but being an intelligent computer programmer does not make you an expert on labor economics. So many readers seem to believe that laissez-faire capitalism will create a better world, but for some reason I doubt they've read Smith, Galbraith, Friedman. Without any knowledge, people somehow make the assumption that unions are incompatible with capitalist economics.
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost as ingenious, as the previous move, whereas the fast food employees suddenly became part of the manufacturing sector. The manufacture cardio-vascular problems...
Re:Correction (Score:2, Insightful)
Why isn't everyone employed if wages are set by the market? Even with very low wages, companies are constrainted by demand for whatever they are producing, and the other non-wage costs of making something. So even if wages are zero you wouldn't have unlimited production, because the cost of making something doesn't become zero.
If you say wages MUST be X, (where X is higher than the market wage), then you increase the cost of producing something. This has the effect of decreasing the number of workers employed and increasing the price of whatever they are making (assuming that wages are a significant portion of total costs of making something.)
Incompetent when old - incompetent when young (Score:5, Insightful)
We have had people in management and engineering who weren't flexible. Hard times pretty much made those people go away due to layoffs.
Those people who are left are plenty flexible. We have one 54 year old who is a runner. He's healthy as a horse and quick. We have another 51 year old who recently made an easy transition from test engineering (a stepping-stone position) to driver development.
It seems to be an assumption that getting old makes you incompetent. But my opinion is that "old" people who are incompetent were always that way. Perhaps they are no longer so good at hiding it. But those people twice my age who were good at their jobs when they were younger are still good at their jobs AND are able to adapt to new positions.
Mind you, I don't adapt as quickly as I did when I was 20. When you get older, you slow down a bit. Sometimes, learning takes a little longer. But intelligence and discipline can make up for that, and a lot of experience makes one more efficient at identifying WHAT to learn.
Re:No reason to thank the unions (Score:5, Insightful)
Some really appaling economics failures in this post.
Let's start with:
"Employers have ALWAYS sought to hire the least amount of people possible. The idea that allowing them to treat their employees like shit will change has no basis in reality."
They SHOULD always seek to hire the least amount possible. If it costs me $10 to make my product (car, ladder, gallon of milk, whatever) then I can sell it to you for $20 and make $10 of profit. If I have to hire three times as many people, it costs me more than $20 to make it now, so no way am I selling it to you for that. The only people who benefit from that are the extra workers, who are effectively being paid to do nothing, since they add no value above the original staff. Forcing someone to pay you when you aren't giving them value in return is theft.
Your problem is you have this mental image of these magical corporate vaults that just fill themselves with money, and the corporations horde it all. With that as your standard, it's no wonder theft seems appealing. But that vision just isn't true. They're filling that vault by charging YOU for their products. If you rob their vault, they're just going to charge you more. The way to make things better isn't to steal harder or faster, it's to work in good faith with the corporation to make the system as efficient as possible. In free trade, both parties profit. Parasites only profit until their host dies or fights back.
Another, more glaring flaw:
"Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour."
First of all, if it was true that there was an oversupply of labor, and that it was causing the price to head towards zero, then it must be heading there really slowly, or else it would be there already. As you state, employment has never been 100%, so the market adjustment you predict seems to be taking longer than all recorded human history.
The reality is that "labor" isn't a single commodity like pork or lumber. Not all labor is the same. You can't fire the Chief of Neurosurgery and replace him with the $5.15/hour guy.
Lastly:
"If employers actually hired people when the price of labor was low to non-existant, then why haven't they hired all of the Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour?"
1) Because there aren't actually that many Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour, especially over the age of 17.
2) Because the unions and the minimum wage laws will try to prevent you from hiring people for $3/hour.
3) Because you have to create the jobs for them to be hired into. This isn't something that should be done by politicians (though they usually claim to do it). This has to be done by corporations, be they large or individual startups, and it requires that they have access to surplus money. Right now they're spending that surplus on the three guys doing one guy's job, two of whom are on break.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
I look at it differently. By boycotting products from non-union companies you are trying to extort the company into "allowing" unions. I didn't hear the people at Coors complaining they were being taken advantage of, and for crying out loud - if you are being taken advantage of, quit, otherwise freaking stop whining and accept it - you are ultimately responsible for you.
And so tell me how someone is better off in a union? Let's say you do start off making close to minimum, how is it better now that you have to pay another "tax" on top of that? And what do you get? Generally crappy raises compared to what you could get if you applied yourself at another company.
Unions are NOT necessary. You are right, the government gives you minimum protections - by defination that's all you need. If you want more, then ask for it, but to gang up on your employer and demand it is extortion, especially under threats of violence to those who refuse to strike.
Unions may be nice for some people, but they are no longer NECESSARY. Unions do not normally improve the employees lives. Yes, there are some outrageous unions that do (like the dock workers in CA), but for the most part: you are guaranteed a raise, for example, but you don't get any more if you work extra hard to excel. You get treated like one of the herd. Forget it, I like my indivuality more than a guaranty of 2%/year raise.
It's getting way off topic. I don't mind discussing this, but I could give you a laundry list of all the negatives of unions, and all the positives are things I'd rather achieve as an individual. Some people don't like proving themselves, some people will fall back and do the minimum necessary to get by. That's just not me.
Re:No reason to thank the unions (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, actually...
It is true that lower wages increase number of people employed. In countries with very low standards of living and wages, jobs are accomplished by throwing lots of labor at them. In countries where workers make more money, employers are more inclined to make capital investments that will lower their labor costs. Generally, employers will make the trade-off between labor and capital based on the price of each; when labor gets more expensive, capital looks more attractive. That's why Wal*Mart is the largest employer in the country... they teach their employees how to apply for food stamps, and get by with paying them $7.50/hour on average (supposedly company-wide... including management and executives). If they had to pay more, they'd probably find ways to cut labor, because it would no longer be the cheapest way for them to get things done.
Which isn't to say that lower wages are somehow good for people because they create more jobs. Underemployment is, in many ways, worse than unemployment... you have to work, but you *still* can't make ends meet. When there's a growing disparity between what people can earn in a full-time job and how much it costs them to live, you wind up with all kinds of economic problems.
Re:This is new how? (Score:1, Insightful)
NO they are NOT. At any age: Not if you're 1.5 sheets to the wind closing down a bar with a hottie. Not if your new baby had you up the last 3 nights. Not if you're already spending 2/3 of your waking hours on the job. Work to live, don't live to work. Then the rest of us won't have to strangle you for raising the bar so high that nobody can tolerate reaching it.
Thanks,
Sanity Claus
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:1, Insightful)
It's time to read Karl Marx again (Score:1, Insightful)
Leave your hangups alone for a minute and read the Communist Manifesto. The gist is this:
When Marx wrote this, he was thinking about England during the Industrial Revolution. Compare this with what's happening in the world today, and predict which country reaches stage 3 first.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep - sounds just like every other area of human endeavour unfortunately. Strangely enough, it sounds remarkably like middle management in a decent sized company, or politics in any other area. Welcome to humanity.
(of course it's often pretty bad in unions, but better than not having unions at all)
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that our system is designed around the scarcity of labor - which is becoming less the case.
Suppose we developed the technology to have robots do 100% of all physical labor, and 95% of all non-inventive labor (any kind of service which doesn't involve very high levels of labor). In theory in such a society everyone could afford to live like a king (at least at present population levels). However, under our present system, you'd have 50 people living far better than any king in history (the 50 people who own the robots), and everybody else who can't even afford to buy food.
The problem is that with modern technology, the need for workers is lowering every year. However, with our present system you can only obtain money by working. Anybody see a potential problem with this?
I'm not sure that communism is the right solution, however eventually something has to change. Perhaps mandatory maximum 5 hour work weeks will be the norm one day?
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:whew.. (Score:2, Insightful)
That and how would YOU like it if your payrate would go up or down based not on your performance, but on an arbitrary number that changed regularly?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an employers market. Which means you will pretty much be paid crap if you quit. Employers know this; Congress knows this; the President knows this. In fact, it's pretty much the reason that all of this crap is able to happen: workers are far too busy working extra hours to keep from being canned to worry about being politically active. They have mortgages/rents to pay and kids (or at least themselves) to feed.
In the times to come, I predict that the worker will be increasingly squeezed. I mean, productivity has gone through the roof, but jobs have consistently been going down. What does this mean? It means that companies need to higher fewer people, which means that for each person working, they know that there are 10 people out there who want his/her job. So that person will work harder, won't ask for a raise, and certainly won't try to upset an employer by pointing out that s/he isn't being paid overtime.
In fact, we have a situation similar to the end of the 19th Century, with thousands of workers clamoring for factory jobs and being willing to stand for ungodly working conditions and low pay because the alternative was no job at all. The *only* thing keeping it from being that bad is *NOT* market forces, but rather a whole slew of governmental regulations that make sure a worker has acceptable working conditions. Those laws were passed as a result of political action by the labor movment. Tragically, the labor movement has now lost a great deal of it strength and credibility. We do need a similar movement however, to protect the rights of the workers and to re-assert the main goal of the United States: not to support the making of money and protections of corporations, but rather the livelihood and freedoms of its populace.
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:4, Insightful)
Salary doesn't mean your not entitled to overtime.
read your state labor laws regarding this.
also, I have found out the salaried 'full time' employee does not mean stability. The last place I was at, they kept the contractors, and let the regular employies go. Different parts of the budget.
Re:No reason to thank the unions (Score:4, Insightful)
This incorrectly presupposes that the lack of a 100% employment rate coincides with an oversupply of labor. It's generally understood in economics that a significant amount of unemployment is due to unavoidable due to frictional unemployment (day-to-day changes in a dynamic, changing economic system in which old industries die and new ones are born, in which people get tired of old jobs and old bosses, in which bosses find work of subordinates unsatisfactory, and in which new people enter and others reenter the labor force), and partially unavoidable due to structural unemployment.
Furthermore, you're implicitly assuming that the "employers" and "employees" come from 2 perfectly distinct pools and that no one goes from employee to employer (nice hidden communist ideology in your post). This is false. In a free capatlist society someone who is working as an employee or is unemployed can start up their own buisness, creating more jobs and oppertunities (increasing the demand in the labor market) while simultaneously removing himself from the market (decreasing supply). The effect of these forces leads to a dynamic balance where the employment number fluctuates accordingly with the state of the whole economy.
Re:Union (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying unions are bad, they have done a great deal for our country's workers throughout the years. I just see this as one of those issues that has more to do with government than it does organized labor. Certainly an IT union would tell us all to vote these guys out. I don't want to get into a political debate so everyone should make that decision on their own.
The best thing to do in this situation is to ask google one simple question: how do I register to vote? [google.com]
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
thats probably becasue the company was forced to pay them a wage and benefits so they can compete to keep workers from moving into a unionized shop. A benefit fom Unions. A good reason Union memeber boycotted them, becasue they were getting the benefits of a union without paying there fair share.
"And so tell me how someone is better off in a union? Let's say you do start off making close to minimum, how is it better now that you have to pay another "tax" on top of that? And what do you get? Generally crappy raises compared to what you could get if you applied yourself at another company."
You get a lot. here is an example:
seniority
Better benefits
you don't start at minumim wage.(what, you think nobosy else thought of the extraexpens before you?)
"but you don't get any more if you work extra hard to excel"
myth. Many unions hae pay grades, someone who excells can be bump into the next paygrade. either by working hard, or aquiring more education.
"You get treated like one of the herd. "
how so? you are part of a body of workers with one voice to the company, and to the government. You still get to vote on issues, you can still get involved.
A union takes NOTHING away from the individule.
OF course an IT union would be different then your manufactureres union, it would have to be. Mostly it would be a voice to help stop us from getting kicked around anymore.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Unionized IT == Me leaving the field (Score:3, Insightful)
My one experience with being forced to unionized was when I was a grad student, and it almost halved my salary. You see the typical TA stipend for Physics grad students is much higher than the typical TA stipend for English grad students. This is primarily due to the chronic undersupply of qualified Physics grad students to TA courses. But in the union shop where I went to grad school the union demanded that all TAs were paid the same rate. Net result: I was making half what I'd be making anywhere else. The university wanted quite badly to pay Physics TAs more, because they were having the devils own time recruiting, but the union wouldn't let them.
If IT unionizes there will be a great sucking sound as the talent moves on to find new fields, and people will look back and wonder why high tech just stopped innovating all of a sudden.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just IT workers & Something you can do (Score:3, Insightful)
There is also something you can do about it.
The link below is a web form that will send a letter protesting the bill. It is a very SHORT form.
http://www.saveovertimepay.org/index.cfm?ms=google [saveovertimepay.org]
Steve
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's remember that strikes are not the only tool in the box of the creative labor organizer. Sabotage, sick-outs, work to rule, and slowdowns are all massively effective and less likely to get you replaced if you are careful.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Programmers are a dime a dozen. Helpdesk is point and click. Sql Server types are removing the need for database admins and any IT skill that isn't oversupplied is outsourced to India, where everyone is better than us anyway.
There is no more money in IT Office work.
Go solo. Set up your own company if you want to see more than 30k and yet another UAT form.
We should have taken business courses
Re:As the market fundamentalists like to say... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as ad-hominen attacks go, I fail to see how paying attention to the facts is an ad-hominem attack. I was merely giving my opponent credit for understanding the fact that without labor unions it is likely that the conditions of working people, including children, would likely get much worse. Things didn't get better magically. Businesses didn't accept a minimum wage and health benefits out of the goodness of their own hearts. The logical extension of "letting the market set prices", is going back to conditions when the market did set the price. We have history, we have facts, we know what it was like when "the market set the price". I shouldn't have to dredge up every single fact or write a book to remind him of this. The logical extension of what he is promoting are similar conditions to the early 20th century in America, or the current situation in the 3rd world, where there are no regulations.
Yes, I have backed that up. I've told you the facts, that things were much worse before Unions were around. More specifically, in countries that have no Unions, such as Mexico, India, the majority of South America, China, etc., the workers are treated much worse. The economies in the majority of the 3rd world are about as unregulated as it gets, with no environmental protections, no labor laws, etc, and I see no reason to envy them, can you give me any? I'm sorry if that's not enough for you, I'm not going to find references for everything I say in an online forum. Maybe some other time I will. If you really believe that workers were treated better before Unions, then I would like to see your evidence. I have found references in the past but I think that the effect Unions have had on wages is fairly obvious.
Re:What about consultants? (Score:2, Insightful)
Look. 30s is not "old".
I don't care what age you are. 30 is not old.
Having said that, I've just enrolled in an MBA to stop my job becoming redundant. Sure, its great to be flexible, but you get to a point where you don't want to spend 70-100 hours a week in order to stay on top of things.
I am not going to be the sort of father who never sees his kids. The best job and biggest house aint worth nuts if your never see those things that count. IE.. family.
(and yes, I was a die hard capitialist who has been "reborn" into the "what's important is the simpler things in life" school of thought. The old axiom is true... you simply can't take it with you.)
Re: 100k (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No reason to thank the unions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not new - for salary workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:some slight corrections (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't one, but there is a free market reason to not pay a living wage except to people who can do work with that much value.
Assume for the moment that minimum wage is $7.75, and that McDonalds fry flipper get payed $8.00 and a living wage is $10.00. Now assume the mimum wage is pushed up to $10. Does that make the fry flippers happy? They get $10.00. Instant raise! Cool! Except...
The prices on anything produced with labour that use to be cheaper then $10 will go up. The prices of things dependent on those things will go up, and so on. That $10 may end up buying less then $8 did. That is standard economic answer A. Standard answer B is we find a way to make that labour cheaper, like cut any employe benefits, or hire illegally cheap labour. Then there is answer C: discontinue the product or move it somewhere cheaper (not likely with fries, but it could be for other things, it happened to USA based clothing companies). There is also answer D: increase productivity, for unskilled tasks this may be with a machine of some sort.
So we end up either with a fry flipper that makes $10 that buys as little as the old $8, or a fry flipper that is unemployed (and thus not making 20% less then the "living wage" but 100% less!). It also eliminates a sub-living wage job for people that don't need a living wage! (people living with their parents, or with some other type of support who only want to a little "spending money")