More Time or More Money?

It seems kind of odd, but in an amazingly quick turn of events on the powerful We the People platform, this week the people won.

Let that sink in for a moment, because it sure doesn't happen every day.

Life's about to change in a radical way for millions of full-time salaried Americans who earn between $23,660 to $47,476 per year who work way too many hours.

If that's you and you didn't do a happy dance yet, stop reading now and click here, then come back, because technically, you're about to get one of two things; overtime pay or a more normal work schedule.

OK, back to earth and down to business. You can read the details yourself in the Fact Sheet: Growing Middle Class Paychecks and Helping Working Families Get Ahead By Expanding Overtime Pay.

I'm interested in two things:

If you are a salaried employee in that pay range, would you prefer the OT pay or the time?

If you are an employer of salaried workers with earnings in that range, what are your plans?

Neither question has easy answers.

The right thing to do (of course) is to compensate people for their work, not give them a salary and work them so many hours they end up earning less than minimum wage, that's exactly what this is meant to prevent. But I predict the cake won't come out of the oven as moist and delicious as the pic looks on the front of the box.

Some companies will likely use a similar strategy to when the Affordable Care Act was passed and mandated that all businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees (FTE) provide health insurance to at least 95% of their full-time employees and dependents up to age 26, or pay a fee. The decision many companies took was to stop hiring full-time employees and reduce hours of existing staff to have more employees work part-time, effectively skirting the new rules. Think fast food restaurants where all or the vast majority of employees are part-time (and barely earning over minimum wage). There were even companies that made the decision to fold it up rather than provide the opportunity to have healthcare to their low wage earning full-time staff.

Many employers who have been legally abusive, because wage and hour laws haven't kept up with the economy, are likely to require much leaner practices, maybe cut down on bathroom breaks, insist on higher production (hopefully not at the risk of safety), and rank annual reviews more stringently and with lower ratings, rather than raise pay into that range and be forced to pay it - to squeeze more out in a regular shift and not have to pay a penny more for overtime. And in a lot of cases, the overtime hours salaried employees should earn over 40 hours under the new rules, will go to new part-time employees earning lower hourly rates.

At least employees who have put up with their employer's bloodletting ways on $23,660 - will now have plenty of time to play frisbee in the park with the kids kids, even if they're still not earning enough money to feed them nutritious meals.

Most companies feel that they take all the risk, and have a right to the rewards of fat profit, do what they may within the parameters of the law to make it. Afterall, this is a capitalist nation, and that's hard to argue with.

It's complicated.

time

Comments

SuzyKaminski / May 20, 2016 @ 9:17 PM

You hit the nail on the head. Squeezing out a pound of flesh at a job has always been a goal of business owners. At one time, I worked in a small manufacturing plant packaging Potpourri as a second income. The owner of the company had a shaming practice. You had to call out loud, the time it took you to package a case box of twelve. Competition ran rampant among the women employees, the bathroom breaks were in a job johnny situated within the building in the same production room. The owner/manager was a good manipulator of people, most of the employees felt like they were packaging Gold Bars, and bragged about their production all through lunch.

Some women, and I must say I was included, felt ashamed of our slow production. The bathroom break issue was almost non existent, who would want to use THOSE embarrassing facilities. I wondered if the high yield employees were benefiting more in their paychecks, so I asked around to find that they were making a whopping ten cents an hour more than the slower workers. I then decided to go at a normal pace and “Forgot” to call out my times. I guess thinking back, that I was a rebel protester. I did’t have a sense of company/employee pride.

So to put it mildly, the owner’s policy was not a great model of how to facilitate a good working relationship with employees, and the hourly rate was not a living wage.

The slower workers all gave a two week notice at the same time. We held a silent protest, and left the job for greener pastures. The position of Potpourri Packager paid $5.25 per hour, the establishment was paying $5.50 per hour to the women conforming to the state of excellence. I worked there for 35 hours per week, and decided that I was not getting paid enough to purchase a week’s worth of groceries after taxes. Not a fair deal!

The owner was making good profits while allowing the workforce to govern themselves with shaming tactics. In today’s world most offices and plants have given up this rudimentary type of management practice. A fair wage practice should provide an employee with as you said, an hourly wage paying enough money to feed themselves and their family nutritious meals.
When will most of the business owners that are not Union affiliated, figure out that to get a good day’s work from an employee, the pay rate should be humane, and allow the worker to feel proud to be working, and making a difference in their own lives and in our Nations economy.

This motto should be the same for employees making $23,600 or $50,000. Both white collar workers and blue collar workers pay the same price for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Everyone works better and more efficiently when they feel appreciated and well compensated; that means compiling a report or flipping a veggie burger.

The practice of lowering a full time worker to a part time worker, not because business is slow, but because the owner doesn’t want to comply with the Affordable Care Act, is a poor practice. Was the act actually a good law, since many employees now have to work two part time jobs just to keep their head above water. Nothing actually got accomplished for these employees. Less hours, less work and less pay AND no insurance. A lose lose situation.
Employees working a full 40 hour week, desire to do a good job, come home and relax and eat that nutritious meal that they worked for. If overtime is needed to get a job done, everyone should be compensated for their work, economically it is on the employers side,for no overtime to be paid out, and just hire two part time workers, but let’s be fair and honest.

Family time is important in keeping families together, but the employers “Bloodletting ways” as you stated, are not conducive to much Frisbee time with the family, a second job is usually taking up all the “free time”, because the new Affordable Care Act does put many employees into a part time status. Should employers “Squeeze out a pound of flesh,” and pay for just half a pound of hard working muscle, well the old saying was, “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.”

As you explained quite eloquently in your commentary, it is impossible for the Middle Class to Expand their Paychecks via Overtime, when a employer bends the rules and learns to sneak around the laws. An employee is reduced to lower part time hourly wages, and doesn’t have the opportunity to again become a Full Time Employee, let alone get some Over Time Hours tacked onto the old Time Card. What is middle Class anyway? “Stuck,” I think that is the answer.

Karla / May 23, 2016 @ 5:46 PM

For the health of the nation, it looks like overall approx. 13m people signed up for coverage on the healthcare exchange, so that is in a very big way a success http://acasignups.net/16/02/05/update-2016-open-enrollment-tally-127m-or-130m-or-134m-depending-pov. Employers who cut hours to skirt having to provide coverage is bad business practice, they will never be the place people ‘want’ to work, turn over will be high, and employee loyalty will be very low. I don’t believe people had to take on 2 jobs because of the ACA. Most employers lowered hours from 40 to 31, because the ACA calls for coverage at 32 hours. It’s possible some people had to take a part time job to cover the 9 hours they lost. You asked what is middle class – I would say it is an old standard of measure of economic success that is less relevant year-to-year. Thanks for tour thoughtful comments.

NeilBytes / May 23, 2016 @ 5:27 PM

karla_porter This will not affect the Bytes Estate….

Karla / May 23, 2016 @ 5:30 PM

I feel so relieved…

GovtjobsguruGurugovtjobs / Jun 6, 2016 @ 12:54 PM

I just wanted to reach out and say “thanks” for mentioning YOUR BRAND in your excellent article. http://govtjobs.guru//

More Time or More Money?

May 20, 2016 / 5 comments

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