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California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

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Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#81

Post by convexfunction »

shagie wrote: post #78
convexfunction wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: the downvotes would seem to mean my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer, of course! A good indicator is "do you have to fill out a timesheet". If you do, that means you're probably paid an hourly wage, and you should be paid overtime; i…

Exempt and non-exempt are orthogonal to salaried an hourly. --- Overtime for an hourly exempt worker is 1.0x. Overtime for a salary exempt worker is not defined. Overtime for an hourly non-exempt worker is 1.5x. Overtime for a salary non-exempt worker is poorly defined. --- An hourly computer professional making over $27.63/hour is likely exempt. One working under that amount is non-exempt. The specifics of how the F…

Yes, that is one of the complications, some roles are "salaried nonexempt". :)

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#82

Post by kube-system »

riyadh144 wrote: post #65
worker_person wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago. Knew a tech worker that had worked years of unpaid overtime for IBM. She said it was fine, because she was exempt. So I looked up the definition of exempt. She didn't meet the legal definition. Argued with her for hours over it. She refused to believe that she was being taken advantage of. In her mind all a company had to do was say you were exempt, and that was enough. Eventually I gave up. Following…

So what is the definition of an exempt worker? How do I know if I am not exempt and being used.

This is the most common exemption: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#83

Post by kube-system »

convexfunction wrote: post #75
riyadh144 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the definition of an exempt worker? How do I know if I am not exempt and being used.

Edit: the downvotes would seem to mean my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer, of course! A good indicator is "do you have to fill out a timesheet". If you do, that means you're probably paid an hourly wage, and you should be paid overtime; i…

You can be hourly and exempt. You can be paid a fixed salary and be non-exempt. There are also many salaried people who fill out timecards.

Edit to your edit:

> my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer

Your generalization is frequently incorrect, because billing by the hour is extremely common. The DOL has a very readable website that explains exemptions. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#84

Post by shagie »

convexfunction wrote: post #81
shagie wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exempt and non-exempt are orthogonal to salaried an hourly. --- Overtime for an hourly exempt worker is 1.0x. Overtime for a salary exempt worker is not defined. Overtime for an hourly non-exempt worker is 1.5x. Overtime for a salary non-exempt worker is poorly defined. --- An hourly computer professional making over $27.63/hour is likely exempt. One working under that amount is non-exempt. The specifics of how the F…

Yes, that is one of the complications, some roles are "salaried nonexempt". :)

For computer professionals, that has a very low threshold of $684 (you have to make less than that per week) to be non-exempt.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17g-overtime-sa...

> Exempt computer employees may be paid at least $684 on a salary basis or on an hourly basis at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#85

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kube-system wrote: post #83
convexfunction wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: the downvotes would seem to mean my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer, of course! A good indicator is "do you have to fill out a timesheet". If you do, that means you're probably paid an hourly wage, and you should be paid overtime; i…

You can be hourly and exempt. You can be paid a fixed salary and be non-exempt. There are also many salaried people who fill out timecards. Edit to your edit: > my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer Your generalization is frequently incorrec…

I've been salaried and gotten paid overtime.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#87

Post by j_walter »

fuzzer37 wrote: post #74
j_walter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make a wide reaching and vague law that doesn't fit every industry is crazy. Are Amazon warehouse workers or delivery drivers really as productive in 32 hours as they are in 40 hours? No...there is no way that is possible. This might work for some big cubicle farms...but not for manufacturing type industries.

> Are Amazon warehouse workers or delivery drivers really as productive... Is this the only thing anyone is ever concerned about? How about employee general well-being? The fact that average worker wages have been absolutely stagnant while average worker productivity has soared since the 70's? Maybe it's time workers won something instead of just getting squeezed for more productivity.

Are they productive because THEY are more productive or because tools and systems have allowed for increased productivity? Should Ford assembly line workers have been paid more because his assembly line system was easier and more productive? He ended up paying them more voluntarily, but would you really want to mandate that?

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#88

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #21

Obviously this will depend on the industry and work environment, but I feel like the "4.5 day workweek" is already a thing for many office workers. What I'm talking about is the culture around slacking on a Friday. At least at my company, it's an unwritten rule that you never schedule a meeting after 12PM on a Friday. You can see from slack statuses that folks most all leave early and take longer lunch breaks. And an…

At my work, they standardized it once a month. The first Friday of every month is "Fresh Air Friday" where employees are strongly encouraged to log off at 1 PM their time. Meetings after 1 PM on a FAF are forbidden.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#89

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

thisismyaccoun7 wrote: post #51
lolinder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The claim that this law would force companies to be more efficient by having fewer meetings assumes management are rational. It also assumes that non-exempt employees are spending 8 hours a week in unnecessary meetings. Aren't most meeting-heavy jobs by definition exempt, since they'll tend to be either professional or administrative?

Researcher/Engineer in government here. The project I've been on for the last year has me averaging over a full day a week in meetings. The PM (who has been in charge of the project for five years now and at the research center 25+) is "non technical", so she likes to have multiple tech roles in each meeting for "backup". It's exactly the hell you'd expect. On the plus side (/s), when COVID forced us telework, they p…

> they put in a policy requiring an email at the end of every of what we did

Every day? Every week? You left out a word.

Every day would be awful. Every week isn't bad. At my work, we recently implemented a Slack bot that would ask you on Friday what you got done, what you wanted to get done but didn't, if you have any blockers, and what you hope to accomplish next week. Honestly, when it was first deployed, I hated the idea of it, but after a couple weeks, I had noticed that there were times when Friday came and I was thinking "I got fucking nothing done this week", but being prompted by the bot to answer the weekly questions made me stop and think harder on it, then I realized I actually was pretty productive.

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