Brendan Duke: How overtime reform will grow the economy from the middle out

[LuckyTheDog]

Our overtime system is broken. Just 18 percent of full-time workers have guaranteed overtime rights today. And unless the Department of Labor modernizes the overtime rules, 0 percent will have them by 2030 if current trends continue.

Without guaranteed overtime rights, employers can easily misclassify workers who spend most of their time at the cash register or restocking shelves as overtime-exempt “executives” or “professionals” and avoid paying them overtime—1.5 times their hourly wage or the equivalent for salaried workers.

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The moral argument for overtime reform is straightforward: When Americans work extra hours, they should earn extra dollars. But the economic case is equally strong.

MORE HERE: http://wonkynewsnerd.com/brendan-duke-overtime-reform-will-grow-economy-middle/

[CrispyQ]

1. They are always looking for ways to take

As an executive assistant I made $55k a year, that's $26.44 an hour. I got overtime when I worked over 40 hours a week, so if I worked an extra 15 hours a week, I made an additional $594.90 that week. I didn't get much OT cuz they didn't want to pay it & I didn't want to work it.

As an IT worker, I was given a laptop & a smart phone & expected to login, after hours & work from home. I made $75k a year, that's $36.05 an hour at 40 hours a week. But I worked at least 55 hours a week so my hourly rate was really $26.22 an hour - 22¢ less than my hourly as an admin! That was Whole Foods, btw. We had four open positions in our department the entire time I worked there. Once in a while, when they thought morale was getting too low, they would bring in a few sucker candidates, get their hopes up, get our hopes up, but they never hired anyone. They let 8 of us do the job of 12 & didn't care that they intruded into our private time - time that should be spent with your family, time that should be spent unwinding & relaxing & all without any additional compensation.

The night I worked all that out, I gave notice the next day.

Corporate vultures. Almost all of them.