Is Overtime Necessary?

Overtime laws get in the way of free choice to work, and interfere with the free supply-and-demand control of wages. Plus, as you point out, they add to litigiousness. Research is showing that people aren't all that productive after 40 hours anyway. Particularly for white collar workers, what is now overtime could be outsourced cheaply to other countries that are in other time zones, allowing work to be completed around the clock. This would also help companies put downward pressure on wages of white collar workers in the U.S., thereby increasing productivity numbers even further.

The problem is companies trying to avoid overtime by making them work off the clock or recategorizing everyone as management. There is little free choice about it, when people can be hired for 40 and made to work 60, and I don't believe in any freedom that makes your job your life. An owner isn't going to have a problem with working overtime, but non-owners and non-c level employees should be paid for their work. The farce is claiming people are paid for their results, not their time, then forcing them to put in their time and then some, turning them into real wage slaves. Yes, it is unproductive but that hasn't changed all too many employers from doing it. What is considered free is wasted so it is beneficial to see what is used is paid for. Anything else is inefficient and noneconomic.

What about the people who work while at home but read blogs while at work?

Eh, I think the current dual-faceted system is about right. Some people want and need the freedom to work crazy hours for the career rewards that may bring, or because they just like to work, or becuase their job lends itself to that, without being limited.

Other people are just there for the paycheck and do need some protection -- because God knows there are a lot of shockingly incompetent, dishonest, and ruthless managers running around.

(Example, right now in Fort Smith, Arkansas, one of the town's hospitals has begun firing hourly workers who call in sick 5 times in a year -- since this new rule is RETROACTIVE people who've been sick the first part of the year are now being fired, though they did not at the time violate any existing policy! Sounds screwed up to me.)

If the government wants to do anything, they should probably publicize whatever the existing laws are, since employers and employees alike often don't have a clue.

Yes they should. If the hours are necessary they should be paid for. IBM has sent a lot of work to Brazil, in addition to months off, they must pay overtime. If Europe, they must give a weeks notice if people are required to work overtime, and then they are paid for it.

At IBM you are given x weeks of vacation yet you must "bill" 2000 hours, exclusive of meaningless company busy work, If you want to take vacation you must work an additional 40 hours.

If you are required to work hours then you are not making independent judgement as a"manager" and should be paid for your work. If its good enough for the rest of the world its good enough for the US. It is a crimw what these companies are getting away with in the US.

Can you imagine working in a factory, or even at Starbucks, and being pressured to work overtime but not getting paid extra for it? That would be miserable. At the same time, I like being a journalist and being responsible for production, not putting in hours. So I guess I'd be for keeping the status quo, even through it produces some tough calls and abuses.

Overtime is paid to employees by their employer per the terms of an employment contract or the applicable laws governing employment. Overtime does not "get in the way of" supply and demand; it acknowledges it. If you want workers to exceed the terms of their normal schedule, then you should be willing to pay for it, just as you pay extra for exceeding the terms of any contract you enter into with another party (typically a company).
The outsourcing mantra as a panacea for all our domestic economic woes is, in fact, making a bargain with the devil. Those of you championing the exportation of your countrymen's jobs or earning power should consider how you will compete with third world workers in the "global economy." We can't all be entrepreneurs or government employees. When all production is outsourced, who here will buy what you are selling? The myth of cheap labor is this: if workers can not earn a living wage, then their basic needs will need to be provided by the government. You end up with socialism, or you end up with anarchy.

It's a tough call. But it's hard to continuously put in 50+ hours when it's due to bad management without just compensation. Yes, studies show productivity drops and mistakes increase after 40 hours of work. But many in management don't understand that. Would I be a lot more willing to give up family time if I was compensated? Absolutely! I've worked in orgs where 40 hours was the norm and others that demanded far more. which ones go the best of their people? The 40 hour places. Which ones kept their people? The 40 hour places. I'm not demanding time and a half, but if I at least got paid more for the over time, I'd be willing to do it. Especially the week long trips. Those suck!!

A few years ago "White Collar" worker in the retail industry--at least according to the overtime laws I was. I only had a 33k salary. I worked from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. five days a week. My salary was based on my previous hourly pay at 48 hours. So I worked about 7 hours or so each week unpaid. This made me very bitter about the job but I was pretty much trapped in the industry. I had no free time with which to acquire new skills. I do think more people need to be paid for every hour that they work. The "white collar" exemption should be reserved for executives and people in other types of powerful positions where they have the power to negotiate with their employer.

Part of me wants to agree with the idea that the overtime laws are antiquated and they interfere with peoples' freedoms. On the other hand I'd hate to see what it would do to this country if we removed them. I think we would all be working a lot more hours if we did. My experience shows me, companies like to squeeze every bit of productivity they can out of their employees. They seem to be unaware that productivity and moral both go down as workers get more tired. Companies push employees up to whatever legal restraint is put in place.

The insurance factor:

Under a straight pay system--As long as companies are providing insurance and other fringe benefits to their employees, every additional hour an employee works is cheaper than the one before it. Why hire new people and pay more insurance bills when you can just make your current employees work 80 hr weeks?

In the end, I think people have more freedom with the overtime laws in place. If individuals want to work more than 40 hours and their employer won't give them the hours, most of the time they can get second job or run a business on the side.
If you take away overtime laws, more people won't have the choice.

In addition to extending the overtime law to the low end white collar workers, we need another protection to keep industries from trapping workers. If an employee wants to go to school part time, an employer should have to make reasonable accomodations to the schedule to allow this to happen--just like they have to for Reserve and National Guard weekend drill time. This would remove, to some degree, the trap that long hours within an industry can set and allow for greater cross-industrial competition for labor.

My job as an engineer was just reclassified as hourly, after fifteen years of being exempt. This was due to a lawsuit. I'm lucky, as I will receive a check for back wages and damages, but nowhere near the true amount worked.

Of course, the company is also 'reassessing' all job categories and will re-establish wage rates for hourly employees. They could theoretically reset the hours to be less and reduce my pay. I lose because someone else was angry about being changed from hourly to exempt without any change to their job assignment or duties.

The group that was reclassified are also being treated differently, in terms of how autonomous they can be. If I traveled on business before, I could leave when it was convenient to my business needs; now I must travel during working hours, or I have to be paid overtime. I also must be available 24/7 for phone calls to support a product, and get paid when a call happens. It's a bother to document every minute of the day.

Having protections from abusive employers is key to this situation. I know friends who are not paid for all their hours, or are paid late, or have different rates of pay for different tasks. All without their consent... which is not fair.

Yes, overtime should be paid in order to prevent abuse by the employer.

Our economy has shifted from a manufacturing based to a service base economy, thus the old standards of blue collar vs white collar just don't apply. As a software developer I'm deemed a professional and don't qualify for overtime pay however, in reality I'm just a modern assembly line worker where my product is software code.

I believe much of the increase in employee productivity in the last 10 years is a result of unpaid overtime as more and more jobs are classified as exempt. The corporate profits generated from the increase in productivity in general have not be passed down to the employee. This is evidenced by wages not keeping up with inflation.

I've seen abuses of the overtime where the employer required 100+ work weeks for exempt employees. The compensation was a $20 gift card.

There needs to be some kind of mechanism in place to prevent employer abuse of overtime.

I have a hard time relating to this hourly wage protection. (1.) The Administration (both parties) have not been willing to identify the millions of illegal workers who have firmly established there place in the economy but have never establish a firm right to fair hourly wage compensation. Its not just a political issue it exemplifies the lack of legal commitment to all wage protection. (2.) The compensation of management often includes bonus which have in the past accounted for 9% of total salary and benefits and option that are never available to hourly workers. I see their lose of this compensation as more telling in any employment reallocation to hourly wage compensation which is deserved. (3.) The attack on major employment benefits health care and pension previously covered in contract wage negotiation. GM/UAW deal, even filling the $54 billion under-funded health care leaving 73000 employee to carry 300000 retired GM employees. (4.) As far as globalization goes the US is now totally an import economy (products and services) more than any production economy. Think final product and service use not direct competition as what we have to gain employment.

The next Administration may commit to wage employees as the center of its political constituency and that may answer this question.

It depends on whether we think that people should have lives outside of work. I recently went over that study on trends in leisure time, The Underworked American:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/6/12411/05257

Basically, most Americans have a 35 hour work week and their work week has been getting shorter since 1900. Without a high school diploma a worker is lucky to work even that much. When employers have to pay for work by the hour, they use as little of it as they can get away with. That drives innovation and raises productivity.

If you have a college degree or better, then you are working longer hours, most likely in an exempt job. These are the time crunch people. Since the marginal cost of their time is zero, their employers will use them for as many hours as possible. This discourages innovation and keeps productivity low.

The truth of the matter is that office life, while unproductive, is rather pleasant. Many Americans really prefer their working lives to their home lives. Children are demanding and annoying. Spouses aren't that much better. Grown ups spending time with friends was wiped by suburbs in the 1970s. People who prefer office life to home life generally oppose hour and overtime laws. Who can blame them?

We need to strengthen hour and overtime laws, and we need to extend them to cover more employees. Our businesses will benefit, because they will become more efficient. Their employees will become more productive. Businessmen tend to look at the next quarter. The government has to take the long term view. Sure, businessmen will complain, but they ALWAYS complain, about everything.

I doubt that the impact on families will be quite so positive. Most Americans already have more leisure time, but almost all of it has gone to television watching. Will college educated sorts just watch more television like everyone else? I wouldn't bet against it. If nothing else, they're still stuck in suburbs where their choice is basically their car or their television.

I work for an international real estate company. All support staff is put on salary. Overtime is frowned upon as the company does not want to pay it, but there are several employees who have to do it in order to do their job, support their team. They are not give overtime or comp time for it. Then there are a couple of employees who if they do have overtime can claim it, but only because it is billed to the client project that is being worked on.

My sister works for a large insurance company in the call center. She is paid for all overtime. That would be white collar in my opinion. So it is all in the company you work for.

Kaleberg - Leisure time also equals vacation time, and as Americans we have the least amount of it. I host language students (mostly execs.)from all over the world. They are all appalled at how long it takes up to build up our vacation.

The reason salaried employees don't get overtime is because they get paid vacations. But some employers make their exempt employees work more than 40hrs/wk for 52 weeks. Any organization that does this is clearly abusing their exempt status. If those employees were paid hourly, they would earn more than they would their fixed salary.

To fix this problem, I think salaried employees should be paid overtime past the number of vacation hours they have accrued. That, I think, is the fairest possible solution.

It may seem simplistic but it should come down to ownership. If "managers" are rewarded with a stake in the institution that they are pouring thier life into, then it seems reasonable for both parties that "managers" should be allowed to judge when they are effectively adding to the value of the company regardless of the schedule. Absent an ownership stake everyone should be paid for thier time and retained/promoted/released based on results.