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Trump, Sanders and the Wage Class

Ah I see. I wasn't sure if "should" was based on a legal obligation or came from a moral position/your own position. This is probably the area of the law that interests me the most (ones of people care, I know) and I think the exemption has essentially become a loophole for employers to get out of paying overtime.

Decent overview of the issue and potential new DOL regs: http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/nprm2015/
 
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Yeah, I'm not buying the distinction of wage class vs. salary class. While I certainly agree that Trump is having success with the wage class's frustrations with the welfare class, don't estimate the appeal of Bernie Sanders to members of the salary class. Who is better off, a plumber with a high school education, a union certification and no debt making $30, $40 or more per hour or a college graduate making a $50k salary and carrying six figures' worth of college debt? Certainly, that is a demographic that both republicans and a Bernie Sanders are targeting - the republicans with anti-union rhetoric, and Bernie's emphasis on student loan debt.

The real story is that both of the above groups have a certain likelihood of resenting the welfare class. And it isn't so much that the welfare class has it so great, it's that for all of their hard work the other two just don't have that much more to show for it. A lot of the economic inequality arguments that have been raised focus more on the wage class and the welfare class. I think there's room for success for the candidate who's able to frame the argument to appeal to those groups.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
I think the exemption has essentially become a loophole for employers to get out of paying overtime.
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Meh, it goes both ways. Most OT for salaried workers would be unnecessary if said salaried workers would get off of the internet and forego their Starbucks runs and smoke breaks and texting their buddies when they are supposedly on the clock. If you sign up for a job with a salary then your responsibility is to get the job done for that salary, regardless of how long it takes you. If you think that results in you working too many hours for too little pay, then either work faster or demand a higher salary to compensate you for those hours, don't go whining about OT.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Meh, it goes both ways. Most OT for salaried workers would be unnecessary if said salaried workers would get off of the internet and forego their Starbucks runs and smoke breaks and texting their buddies when they are supposedly on the clock. If you sign up for a job with a salary then your responsibility is to get the job done for that salary, regardless of how long it takes you. If you think that results in you working too many hours for too little pay, then either work faster or demand a higher salary to compensate you for those hours, don't go whining about OT.
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I think the better inquiry is what was the underlying legislative purpose or intention for providing an FLSA exemption to salaried workers. That shifts the analysis. If the rationale was that it would apply to a small section of the workforce who happened to be salaried rather than anyone who was a salaried employee (i.e. the intention was to exempt specific types of jobs like administrative workers or managers rather than any job which happened to be salaried), then I think the points you're making are irrelevant. If the intention was there should be no overtime for any salaried employees because they're being compensated at a salaried level with the implicit understanding being that you will make that salary no matter how much you work then I think the points you're making are certainly relevant and you may be right that your remedy lies at the bargaining table.

On a personal level, what would your response be to an employee who said they were consistently working overtime, were salaried, and wanted higher pay for the work they were doing? Would you engage in a good-faith analysis to figure out if that person was right or not, or would you tell them to take a hike if they didn't like the salary because you'll find someone else to do it?
 
It's pretty easy to tell which employees are your good employees and legitimately busting their ass for you, and which ones are just sliding by. I always try to be proactive and raise the salaries on the good ones before they have to ask for it (or if they ask for something and they deserve it, I'll usually go over what they ask for by about 10% so they know that I know they weren't BSing me). It is worth it to keep the good ones. I have one girl whose salary and bonus (excluding healthcare) has gone from $21k/year to over $50k/year over the last 18 months without her asking for any of it, simply because she is a rockstar and we don't want her to even think about leaving. But, along with that, I don't think I should have to pay her OT if she has to work an extra hour here or there (and I know she does the usual online shopping, etc. while at work and I don't mind it so long as she is getting her work done).
The ones who are sliding by it just depends on the circumstances.
The big pain in the ass currently is that I can't give our non-exempt employees remote e-mail access because their using it after hours counts towards OT, even though it would make their on-the-clock work more flexible to where they wouldn't have to be in the office all the time. So it is definitely a double-edged sword.
 
The original exemption levels for FLSA covered wages up to the 40th percentile of all income when they first came out. The salary level didn't keep up with inflation and the new level (double the current) attempts to bring the relative percentile back to the original level.

In terms of my make some jobs exempt: Some of the ideas were just to control cost (At one point there was an exemption for working moving livestock on foot overnight... i.e. cowboys), others were about the nature of the work (duties tests)..Others were about making sure that there was a difference in white collar and blue. Remember, the natural order is that everyone is paid overtime unless a company can point to an exemption to avoid the overtime requirements.

That is my opinion based upon things I've read.
 
What's the opposition to tying some of these areas (minimum wage for instance) to inflation or some sort of metric that takes into account changes in the dollar? I've never really heard a good rationale for it and with most people, at least on minimum wage, (if you can get them to listen long enough) you can get to the point where they find out that minimum wage hasn't been raised in X years and wasn't ever tied to inflation, say "oh well we should at least bump it up to what the amount is worth now."

So what's the opposition to tying minimum wage or FLSA issues to adjust for inflation?
 
It's now become the norm for much of the "salary class" to be available for work-related issues for much of the day.
 
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