"Let's all screw the 1 percent"

This is missing the entire point of the article -- the millions of jobs that used to come with plentiful overtime but now come with none.

It's one of the more effective ways income has been concentrated upward.

 

It's been the law of the land since before WWII. I don't know if it's "sacred" and it may be arbitrary, but its the rules. The workplace has evolved, perhaps beyond these standards. That's something that needs to be dealt with by law and policy makers. For as long as they decide to make no changes, companies shouldn't be shoehorning free work under the guise of OT exemption. It may not be the case in every industry but the examples I've seen of this in retail are glaring.

 

Then you can count yourself as lucky that you are allowed to leave after 6 hours because you put in 11 the day before. There are plenty out there who aren't. For those in low-wage jobs, they especially are vulnerable. Increasing the limit gives them one extra protection.

 

I worked for 10 years in three jobs where I was "salaried." They gave me the "some weeks you'll work 55 hours, some weeks in the summer you'll work 30" baloney.

Bullshit. First of all, it was not "some" weeks I worked 55 hours, it was almost every week -- except, of course, preseason tab weeks (2 weeks every August, one week every December) when it was 75 hours, and two or three weeks for tournament time every November, March and May when it was 60-65 hours.

And as for the "summer weeks" when it was gonna be OK to work 30 hours? Bwahahahahahah. Any week in which it appeared I didn't have 40 hours booked up ahead of time, the publishers would dig up monkey-work bullshit for me to do: go shoot bridge club grip-and-grins at 8:30 a.m., make cop calls, type up obits and press releases, etc etc etc etc.

Over the total duration of those 10 years, I am sure I averaged probably 55-58 hours per week, maybe more.

Eventually I moved on to other jobs, but that doesn't mean I wasn't getting fucked at the ones before. And lots of people still are today.

There oughta be a law. Of course, there is, but nobody has ever been very interested in enforcing it.

 

Of course, there are two factors at play here. If you have a shift that ends at 5 p.m. and you are asked to stay until 8, then obviously you are being asked to work overtime. If, however, you're not working on a clock, you have "X" amount of work to do and it simply takes you 11 hours to finish it, then your boss could argue you just didn't work efficiently enough. He would not by default be wrong. People do have different degrees of efficiency.

 

Worked damn hard but kept an eye for the future throughout. I've been lucky in that I haven't gotten canned in 20 years in the TV business but I've always tried to learn new technologies and get along with people. That's saved me more than once during budget cuts. " 'Hack' shoots his own stuff and doesn't bitch about it. Keep him'." This happened during the 2009 TV newsroom budget cuts.

I started out hourly way back when. $7.27 an hour as a sports anchor in a tiny market. The overtime I made was insane at this job because I averaged 57 hours a week. I also made it a point to work slowly and methodically because of the low-wage.

Two years later, at 24, I moved to another small market as the main sports anchor. This was a salaried job - $31,000 a year. Not great money but for a young kid, I felt like I was B.I.G. During the winter sports season, it was a six-day-a-week, sometimes 10 hours a day job. Add in Sundays during the NFL season. Yet I knew this going in. I wanted the extra hours for the experience.

However, I also learned to be efficient with my time. The "normal" shift would be 2 pm to 11 pm for this. Yet I also didn't have any children at the time so I would roll in at noon or so, write the sportscasts and edit the video and be finished by 2. Then I would go work out across the street for 2 hours but kept my phone on in case any "breaking sports news" hit. Perhaps drop by a school or team practice at 4 pm, anchor the 6, go shoot a couple of games between 7 and 9 and do the late news. For the actual amount of time I would be at the station, it would still be 8 -- just spread out.

Due to the fact that the shows were all written, produced and, usually edited (except for any video or highlights shot that day) and because I often shot my own material, no one ever said "you need to be here from 2 to 4." The work always got done, my shows were always on time. (I anchor sports here about 10 times a year and it's the same thing -- each show takes only an hour to write, edit and produce... then I put my feet up or play Donkey Kong at my desk for three hours.)

When I anchor the news, I could complete the entire daily work load in about 4 hours' time. 4 to 6:30 and 8:30 to 11. That's because I've lived here long enough and have enough contacts where I can show up, write the copy, make sure my anchor hair is perfect, go home and return. Of course, I don't do this - I gladly spend the full day in the office. I've always felt that, from a morale standpoint, an anchor should never be gone more than an hour -- the anchors who DO take 3-hour dinner breaks in the business are newsroom cancers. It brings everyone down.

There is one aspect that has emerged that challenges all of this. Being "available" on a 24/7 basis. If I get a news story or tip on the weekends or in the mornings, I always take the call, answer the email, even execute research on my own time. That's part of the job in what I do. If I get a story on an off day and can save it for the weekday, that is like finding a $20 bill in the dryer.

But if you're a photographer, producer or someone else not responsible - as management - for the daily content, you shouldn't have to do any work when you're "off the clock". Called out to a shooting or a crime scene in the middle of the night? Pay the overtime...every time. (I've worked at some stations that tried to screw employees over on overtime and that's the worst.)

 

I have found that the "some weeks you'll work 55, some weeks you'll work 30" typically favors the employer by a lot. If you have one or two weeks in the whole years in which you work 30, they remember it and in many cases remind you of that, while ignoring the many weeks of 55 (and certainly 40+). OK, so...

If you like your job, you can roll with it. Or you can point out the imbalance of it, time/effort to compensation, and hope for a compromise from a reasonable boss. Or you can polish up your resume. If you're valued above a replacement worker, chances are greater the employer will address the problem. If you're easily replaceable, don't let the door hit you in the ass.

One paper where I worked got hit up by copy editors for even 30 minutes of OT and routinely paid it, but the department heads resented reporters seeking OT except on the most outrageous 14-hour days. I always sensed it was both philosophical (reporters have the "fun" jobs and work out-of-sight of the supervisors, while copy editors are lashed to their desks) and a statement on the relative pains in the ass of hiring another copy editor vs. another reporter.

 

He would be wrong if he gave you 11 hours worth of work to do. If he had you scheduled to work a shift during the day and cover a 3-hour meeting at night, that's giving you 11 hours of work.

"X" amount of work is supposed to take 8 hours to do. If "X" takes more than 8 hours, and the employee isn't slacking, then that is the equivalent of being asked to work overtime.

 

Ah, but the key variable of worker efficiency is always at play, too.

The amount of work would be "X" but that's also a factor of a worker's efficiency/proficiency quotient, "Y".

I've worked with Photographer A can complete the daily tasks plus hit a crime scene and set up a live shot while Photographer B is still struggling with the daily tasks after eight hours.

I think the larger issue comes in when the efficient/competent people constantly get screwed because of the slow and incompetent co-workers. I know, when I do staffing, I'm guilty of this as well (plus this does happen to me because I am very efficient). I'll send the best photographer with the best reporter on a story of the day. I'll send the crummy photographer and the reporter to the city council meeting.

On those days where it is 11 hours of work, I hate doing it to the crews -- and I don't like when I'm stuck on one myself -- but it's part of the business. Usually when that happens, I'll make sure they have an easier day the next day, if staffing allows. Newsroom morale is so damn fleeting, week to week, as it is. If you burn a really good reporter (or producer or photographer) over an extended stretch, they'll get the hell out and go find a higher paying job (which I welcome as I want everyone I work with to maximize their pay, whether here or elsewhere).

I don't count hours when I manage our reporting crews and my boss doesn't count mine. Do the shows look good? Did we get all the content? No typos in the copy? If that's all in place, I don't mind people taking off a little earlier.

 

At our place (not a media outlet), we're all on salary, but the only one I see routinely putting in more than 40-hour weeks is the CEO.

 

Maybe. Maybe not.

You can not be "slacking" but just not be very quick or efficient. You don't necessarily have the "right" to claim overtime if you happen to work on the slow side. Sometimes it really is up to the worker to pick up the pace.

 

You have a very unusual workplace. In the huge majority of workplaces, the situation is precisely reversed.