New OT law and the media

In the world of TV news, I envision a slew of lowball offers coming to people a few years in the business at $48,500 now.

If you're offered $46,000 a year in TV news, you'll work 40 hours a week. If you're offered more than $48,000, be ready to work your ass off.

 

There's also supposed to be automatic updates every three years, starting in 2020, that is tied into the 40th percentile of the weekly salary earnings of the lowest paid Census region (in this case, the South).

So, in 2020, the threshold goes up even more, meaning that businesses will have to decide whether to raise a worker past $48,500, or make them eligible for OT. That's one way to get a raise.

 

I see my current employer figuring out a way around this. There's no way they're going to suddenly pay overtime to someone nearly making $50K and there's no way they're going to suddenly accept less work that resembles a 40 hour work week. Perhaps they'll become time clock hawks. I've seen them do that before.

 

From my understanding, there's a secondary issue of whether you are in a truly supervisory role. If you're not, they have to pay the overtime regardless of the income level.

That's why producers were moved to hourly in my chain.

 

This company, from the way I'm looking at it, is in a "no-win" situation. They can't afford to pay us that much and they say they can't afford to pay us overtime.

 

I challenge all of us to please secretly tape these conversations. If you tape and get them that way, you can sue. It's the same at our shop and most all shops. You work 60-70 and get paid for 40. Whatever the law is on being "on call" well ... any sports reporters who have to monitor twitter and tweet all day, scoops and non scoops, I'm sure you could be paid for that as well. I know many who work 70-80 an get paid for 40.

 

Sell your newspaper stock, if you still have any.

 

If you are a salaried manager they could require you to work 60-70 hours a week for your salary. Legally.

 

If the salary you make divided by the hours you worked is less than minimum wage, they have to make up the difference.

 

Sounds like something you should go to school for.

 

I see 99 percent of companies figuring out a way around this. That's what companies do. If they have "X" as their payroll budget, then "X" is what will get paid. If that means 10 people get "X+OT" and 5 people get laid off or reduced hours, then so be it. Whenever you make a company "pay more", whether it's corporate taxes or family leave or mandated overtime, there will be tons of collateral damage.

 

The work still needs to get done. If 15 employees are making X for working 600 hours a week, laying off five people means there's now 10 people to do 600 hours of work that needs to be done. The remaining 10 employees are going to work 60-hour weeks, and get paid time and a half for 20 of those hours. That's 200 hours of overtime at time and a half per week. It's the equivalent of paying 300 hours of straight time. It would cost the company more money to do that than pay the 5 employees for the 200 hours of straight time that they were working and they now will be having burned-out 60-hour employees who will be less productive.