[taustin]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It's not always abuse.

I've said so, many times. I've been salaried exempt for 20+ years, and when a new HR director tried to put me on the timeclock, I fought it tooth and nail. I would have, technically, gotten paid more, but not very much more (because my employer does not abuse it at all), and certainly not enough to be worth the hassle of having to keep track of whether or not I had to put my pants on when I got a call on the weekend.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It is a tradeoff. Legally, they call it terms of employment and it is usually spelled out in the employment agreement.

Not really. Only certain categories of employee are allowed to be salaried exempt, regardless of what they agree to in a contract. There is extensive case law. Generally speaking, one must be a trained professional (either licensed, like a lawyer or an engineer), or be required to have a college degree, or one must be in a supervisory position (spending at least 50% of one's time actually supervising other employees), or meet other, less generic criteria, but generally doing a job that requires specialized skills and has broad discretion in how one does the work. Some states (like California) are far stricter than the federal standards (the federal standard for programmers to be exempt is about half what California's is, for instance).

But simply agreeing in a contract to be exempt is not enough. As a lot of employers have found out the hard way.[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Those startup employees working 80-100 hours

generally, though not always, qualify for an exempt status. Usually, by way of stock options, making them executives. All too often, though, their exempt status is simply illegal, and they don't know it because they were lied to (or because the people who hired them don't understand the law, either).

Originally Posted by fjtorres

signed up voluntarily. Many of them are millionaires by the time they're 30.

And many more are burned out by the time they're 30, with nothing to show for it.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

More own their houses free and clear by 40. And in silivalley that means something. Not everybody, but a lot.
Others decide the lifestyle is not for them and move on. The resume looks mighty good elsewhere so they're still ahead of the game.

My brother was a mechanical engineer running the maintenance dept at a refinery. Once a year, the place shut down for maintenance for a week. Double shift for everybody. Mechanics and techs got overtime but not him.

Engineers are licensed professional with a college degree. That's one of the categories that can, in fact, be exempt. Do you really believe the company would have paid the mechanics and techs overtime if they weren't required to by law? I suspect that your brother also made quite a bit more than the mechanics and techs, as well (even if they were unionized). Few people with an engineering degree and EIT license are going to work for minimum wage.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Not a problem. Because the rest of the year when things were humming, he'd get extra daytime with his kids. Two vacations a year. A nice salary and house. No time clock. And in many businesses it is, frankly, a status symbol; you are trusted to do your job and earn your keep without the monitoring of a punch card.

And in many businesses, you get worked 80 hours a week with no overtime for the equivalent of less than minimum wage per hour.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And if it means taking an hour here and there to run errands or go to the doctor nobody blinks. The job getting done and done well is what matters. Sometimes it takes 10 hours, sometimes five. No sitting in the office twiddling thumbs if everything is covered so starting the weekend early is perfectly fine.

And a well run company, yes. And a poorly run company, people who cannot legally be exempt are classified as exempt, worked until they can't take it any more, and paid subsistence wages. There's all kinds, and a lot of companies really don't understand the law.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

My sister runs the entire food and beverage dept at a high end tourist resort.

Sounds like a supervisory position. Which is to say, legally qualified to be exempt. One of the easier categories to be legally exempt, and not have an inherent expectation of high wages, even.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Certified chef among other qualifications. 50 hour weeks are normal for her. 60 hours common. It's not required of her but it *is* what her work ethic demands of her. The salary is good; her satisfaction at being among the best in her business is even better. She knows every job in her department and can and will do it at the drop of a hat as needed. Not everybody is cut out for that but she is a natural at it. She takes pride in her achievements and that comes from her value system. She is hardly unique. Most professionals are similarly driven.

What you seem to be saying is that because you know a couple of people whose employers don't abuse exempt status, nobody else does either. There's quite a bit of case law that suggests otherwise, and in fact, that it's quite common. Not most, I expect, by a long shot, but it's quite common. Ignorance is a far more common reason than deliberate abuse, but the company still benefits from an illegal practice, and that's abusive.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Exempt status *can* be abused, by the employer *and* the employee. But not every practice is an abuse. Different companies and different jobs have different cultures and practices. You live up to it or move on.

Indeed. Or you can fight for what's owed you, if it's worth more than the cost of the fight. Microsoft pay out $100 to avoid a final ruling that would have cost them more, for instance, though that was over classifying employees as consultants rather than salaried exempt status. But it amounted to the same thing: illegally not paying overtime. Walmart gets sued, on average, 17 times every day, mostly over labor practices.

If one looks at the number of companies that abuse their employees, I suspect the percentage is fairly low. But if one looks at the number of employees subject to abusive labor practices (not even counting paying subsistence wages at legal rates), I suspect that percentage is a lot higher, because every really big company has a lot of problems.