Note: This post was written on 10.06.2024 and never posted. I’ve been going through drafts for each blog in the hippiegrrl media universe and choosing to hit post to get things moving again. Even though this is a bit dated, I hope you can enjoy it nonetheless. See you soon with something new – I have a lot of ideas about AI that I think will fit here nicely, considering robots don’t dance and neither can AI.
Hello! It has been a while since I’ve written over here. So many things have happened in the last 3 years and 6 months, but one thing is constant – I am still working for the same company, under a constant flux of leadership. I’ve been with this company for almost 12 years now, and over the past 6 things have been tumultuous, to say the least. After COVID, the fear of having no income was the main driver to continue working for the same employer, but now that things are starting to turn around with the economy, the job market appears to be bouncing back (reuters.com) as well. Having said all that, I’m not actively looking for another job, at the moment, but I wanted to hop on here today to discuss something else that has been eating at me for a little while now. Why are corporations allowed to pay their workers as salaried employees, leading to a great deal of wage theft?
The answer has to do with the labour laws, how hourly pay differs from salaried pay, and how the hours spent by workers, solely on computers, are made invisible whether they are in an office setting or working from home.
Before we begin, I would like to state here, that this is by NO MEANS a comparison between hourly and salaried workers. I’m using the standards of the US Labor Department to show why salaried workers tend to work longer hours without overtime pay (employers are not required to pay “exempt” employees overtime) but this does not mean that hourly workers do not experience wage theft. It isn’t an either/or, but a both/and discussion. For the sake of this piece, though, I’ll be focusing more heavily on salaried worker’s wages and the invisible nature of additional work on the exempt side of the ‘shop’.
To better understand this, let’s begin with some key parts of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), since it dictates how corporations are purported to be held accountable to fair pay and work standards.
Federal Minimum Wage
“The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Many states also have minimum wage laws. In cases where an employee is subject to both state and federal minimum wage laws, the employee is entitled to the higher minimum wage.” (dol.gov)
Overtime Pay
“Covered nonexempt employees must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 per workweek (any fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours – seven consecutive 24-hour periods) at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay. There is no limit on the number of hours employees 16 years or older may work in any workweek. The FLSA does not require overtime pay for work on weekends, holidays, or regular days of rest, unless overtime is worked on such days.” (dol.gov)
Exempt versus Nonexempt Employees
The FLSA has a full section dedicated to denoting which employees are considered exempt from minimum wage and/or overtime pay (dol.gov), but for the purposes of this post, we will be thinking of the difference between exempt and nonexempt employees as follows:
- Exempt = Salaried workers
- Nonexempt = Hourly workers
For exempt employees, we will be considering solely those individuals considered Computer Professionals. The FLSA has specific exemptions based on pay, for these types of employees as shown here: “Section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provides that certain computer professionals paid at least $27.63 per hour are exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA.” (dol.gov)
Title 29, of the US Code of Federal Regulations, lays out the rules that employers must abide by when it comes to workers. In Part 785.10 there is text that discusses employees “suffered or permitted” to work, stating: “Work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time. For example, an employee may voluntarily continue to work at the end of the shift. He may be a pieceworker, he may desire to finish an assigned task or he may wish to correct errors, paste work tickets, prepare time reports or other records. The reason is immaterial. The employer knows or has reason to believe that he is continuing to work and the time is working time.” (ecfr.gov)
Although meal times (minimum of 30 minutes) are not considered compensable time, other short breaks are considered rest (5 to 20 minutes) and must be provided for employees after a certain time frame worked. This is also shown in Title 29 stating: “Rest periods of short duration, running from 5 minutes to about 20 minutes, are common in industry. They promote the efficiency of the employee and are customarily paid for as working time. They must be counted as hours worked. Compensable time of rest periods may not be offset against other working time such as compensable waiting time or on-call time.” (ecfr.gov)
Beyond breaks, you might wonder if sick, vacation, or holiday time (general paid leave) is required by Federal law and, in the United States, it is not. The only required leave, which was granted by the Family and Medical Leave Act, is as follows:
- Twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for:
- the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth;
- the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement;
- to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition;
- a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job;
- any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty;” or
- Twenty-six work weeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness if the eligible employee is the servicemember’s spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin (military caregiver leave).
Although employees are not required to grant paid leave, most exempt employees do receive paid leave as part of their benefits package. Here is where the intersection of unpaid overtime work for salaried employees and PTO collide.
Let’s say that a Computer Professional (CP) works an additional 10 hours per week to fill in the gaps in employment that have been left behind by downsizing events or workers leaving and not being replaced. If that CP also receives the equivalent of 4 weeks per year in vacation time, 1 week (5 days) of sick time, and 2 weeks (10 days) of holiday pay, that adds up to 7 weeks off, leaving the equivalent of 45 weeks of work time per year. Working an additional 10 hours per week, above the 40 hours they are required to work, means that they are giving an additional 450 hours of time to the company, in unpaid labour, each year. Although they are not entitled to overtime pay, they should not be penalized for working those additional hours and those 450 hours per year effectively erases the “paid time off” that is part of the benefits package for their employment. 7 weeks of paid time off is the equivalent of 280 hours per year. Subtracting that from the 450 hours of extra time that the salaried employee works leaves 170 hours of unpaid time that the employee gave to the company and did not recoup via time off, nor extra pay.
This appears to be wage theft. Sure, the employee COULD log off the computer and not work the extra 2 hours per day (10 hours per week) to get the additional work completed, but then that employee would fall behind and eventually be let go for ‘incompetence’. When, in actuality, the workload is 25% higher than it should be. By not rehiring after employees leave, and asking current staff to ‘pick up the slack’ for those lost workers, corporations are making millions of dollars per year off the backs of workers who continue picking up the slack for years on end. Sure, the bosses might say ‘all hands on deck until we can hire again’, but once the C-level suite gets wind of the effectiveness of overtime work without pay, they are slow to hire anyone into these spots.
Due to the nature of exempt work, the above scenario is difficult to pin down and even more difficult to file any claims on. Exempt workers don’t have time clocks to punch or oversight of their work hours because employers are held to low or no standards when it comes to their wages. Coupled with the fact that workers are giving anywhere from 5-25% more effort to their jobs than they did in the past, and then at review time are told that the company can only afford a 3% raise, you can see why ‘quiet quitting’ or ‘job hopping’ have become a lot more prevalent in recent years.
So what are salaried employees to do?
As is the case, I always like to come with a solution. Although I do not advocate for the full range of ‘quiet quitting’ that has been implemented over the last couple of years by office workers in the U.S., I will say that slowing down and maintaining a 40 hour per week work schedule is the way to go. Complete what you can in that 40-hour time frame and let your bosses know that you are not going to work overtime. If they tell you, or merely elude to you, that you have to work more hours to ‘pick up the slack’ for lost employees, kindly let them know that you will continue to do your best, but that you are not willing to give up additional time each week to put toward work. If they want the work done well, they need to fill the empty seats.
If that doesn’t work and the bosses insist you have to work overtime to stay employed with them, it is time to move on. I know that is very daunting and can certainly be difficult in this current job market, but it is necessary to achieve a healthy work life and to keep you home life separated. Employers have gotten entirely too comfortable, over the last 4 years, with using the fact that employees are working from home to grow increasingly hungry for extra time. And employees, oftentimes, feel pressured to stay online well beyond the 8-hour work day or to answer emails/texts/etc. in off hours. This is unhealthy and uncalled for and sometimes moving on is the only option.
I hope that you have a boss that is understanding and mindful, but if not, I wish you the best of luck in your job search! Carpe diem!
