Good step, but let's get that down to a 32 hour work week with no reduction in pay.
Most jobs that are OT exempt have been shown to be more productive with a slightly shorter work week.
totally agree. I remember in the '90s, we were told that because of technology, we would have way more leisure time and everyone wouldn't have to work so hard.
The exact opposite happened as productivity skyrockets and wages stagnate. it's time to fix that with a 34 hour work week!
They've been saying that since the 1950s. Thankfully our corporate masters figured out how to fill our lives with toil so we don't have to endure the horror of enjoying them.
I used to work in construction. When I saw the first new tool demonstration, I thought, "Cool!" After the 50th, I thought "Great. Another thing to make working easier so we can just work more."
But on the flip side, new tools are pretty cool.
I mean, new tools are still probably a good thing if it means less damage to one's body over time.
You know what else reduces bodily damage?
Being home 😆
But in all seriousness you're right, but that lies right at the heart of the "productivity vs pay" debate. We create all sorts of new tools (coughautomationcough) that increase our productivity, but the only people who reap the benefits of that are the capitalists who now have time to play two rounds of golf on Tuesday instead of one.
We create better tools to enable work to be easier. But now we're expected to produce more instead of have a better work-life balance.
We're literally never going to have that utopia as long as we maintain this "ownership class."
We "don't deserve" the fruits of the increased productivity because they came with the technology and machines that the ownership class owns.
"They deserve the profit because they paid for the machines."
We will literally never have that utopia because the workers don't own anything.
But that’s socialism /s
It wasn’t just the 90’s. That’s been happening since the Industrial Revolution.
Hell how many stories have there been of people getting fired for automating their job haha.
But then billionaires wouldn't be so stinking rich if we did.
TL:DR; more people are going to get overtime pay.
Thank you! The goddamned lede was buried.
Suddenly, a large number of people are now classified as part-time workers scheduled for 39.999 hours a week.
I always thought the idea of being on a salary was disgustingly abusive/exploitative. I can't believe I have coworkers that defend the idea that they work more hours but don't get paid for it.
Like what??
I do fully expect to see a disgusting reduction in pay coming for those salaried people though. The boss never loses.
I remember my first job with IBM's "CIC" department. I think it stood for "Customer Innovation Center", but we always referred to it as the "Cheap Labor Department". Basically, software engineers stationed in rural america and getting paid way less than our skillset should go for (when I was hired in 2016, my starting pay was 34k), but because it was rural and remote work wasn't really a thing yet, those developers didn't really have much choice (it was still the best paying job around, but still not enough to afford a local apt even back then while paying student loans)
Anyway, the most notable thing about that position was that it was not only salaried, but when a dev got put on a contract, they would tell us to work 44 hours/week, whether there was that much work or not. Obviously they couldn't and didn't enforce that outright, but it was 100% implied as part of our performance reviews whether we put in those extra unecessary hours. All so IBM could pocket just a bit more of that contract money without paying the people actually doing the work. Fuck IBM.
ETA: reading through the article I remembered that we actually got a nice pay bump soon after I started because Obama raised the minimum salaried wage that same year, then packaged it as generosity lmao. I wonder what calculations they did to say it was cheaper to give us raises than let us work overtime, hmmmmm
I think it’s one of those things, like non-compete agreements that make sense for a small number of people but somehow was allowed to spread to everyone.
Just in time for the supreme court to declare the NLRB unconstitutional
From who? Who'd he save it from? Can we get a 32 hour work week? No? Why not?
Read the article, it’s pretty clear who the author targets as the villain here. I haven’t verified the accuracy of it, but taking them at their word: management and the GOP that let requirements of who is guaranteed OT pay dwindle. This restores what Obama did that was then dismantled by right wing judges and Trump.
I think it has the potential of being a stepping stone, in first restoring who gets OT, to later push hours reduction before OT kicks in.
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