They withheld my last paycheck when I quit and stopped responding to my calls so I had to file with the PA labor board, I sent in those paystubs and answered questions about the role and what I did there. Couple weeks later they send me a check for 20 grand out of the blue, the business had to pay back overtime becuase I was misclassifed. I was just looking for the $300 or so they owed me, was really surprised with the outcome.
Glad this ended up working out in your favor. Your story makes me wonder how often such a practice doesn't end with the employer forking up the 20 grand they stole. I guess I've heard it said that wage theft is the most common form of theft but this is still rather frustrating to think about.
Does this sort of practice come with some other punishment or does the board just tell the employer to pay what's owed?
In PA they have to pay double whatever is collected, so they wrote a similar check to the labor board, that's how they are funded and I think it's revenue positive.
As gp showed, most people are not fully aware of their labor rights, and when they are, may not know the remedies available to them. Wage theft is endemic because of information asymmetry.
If a company steals $300 from the employee, the people in charge - the CEO - should have the same fate. It would solve the problem pretty quickly.
the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization.
To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...
Year later, the day before I gave my two weeks, my boss told me I was becoming known as an 8 to 5 guy... I wasn't working enough extra hours. After I told him that he wasn't paying me enough to waste my life away at the job, he wasn't too surprised when I gave my notice the next day.
Florida academia and pay fuckery, name a more iconic duo. FIU Alumni and Ex-Employee Here.
The fact is the majority of the work day is wasted, just like I waste ghz all the time because it's cheap, why wouldn't employers waste your time if it's free?
Employment "at will" means either the employer or employee can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
Jail is a huge motivating factor and why you don’t see wide spread accounting fraud in public companies.
This isn't a new concept at all. Professional engineers have similar levels of risk if they breach ethics, though I don't know if it's criminal or just self regulatory and civil.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/nsa-contractor-pleads-gui...
Making offering not enough money to someone a criminal offense sounds like a dangerous ground to stand on.
This is not what would be illegal. Wage theft is actual theft in the sense that they knowingly have something (and even sometimes attempt to retain the something) which is legally not theirs. Yes, the worker should quit. Yes, the worker should go after what's owed them. These things aren't mutually exclusive.
If an employees took the same amount of money it would be theft, so illegally not paying that amount is a very similar crime.
Any work more than 8 hours in a day should result in overtime pay regardless of type of work or base salary.
It’s ridiculous that companies can force people to work 24/7 with no extra pay just because those people happen to work with computers or in "knowledge" work.
And even developers/IT folks are largely not making FAANG money. They're working at hospitals/insurance companies making the equivalent of what a factory worker made in the 1950s.
When I worked at a government contractor this was part of the deal. Any more than 48 hours a week and you'd get all your time over 40 paid as OT where they converted your salary to an hourly rate.
I got a job at an agency afterwards. I immediately understood why Hollywood production jobs are so serious about their time. You can make your grips work through lunch or dinner, but it's gonna cost you money. I would have loved that deal, but how are you gonna unionize an office like that? It's a lot.
But to make up for this I am also compensated several times the median household income. And the threshold for paying people like me should definitely be set to at least 2x the median household income for the region in which you work or 2x the federal average whichever is more. Currently, that'd be a minimum of $141K/yr. I feel that's a reasonable cutoff for no more overtime pay.
This is why work from home was such a boon. Finally i could have shower thoughts on company time. Finally I could get away from the incompetent coworkers who kept asking me to do their job for them... some days I'd literally help others till 5PM and then start my job when they went home. And then my boss would say "You missed your delivery" and Id be like yea, but the 10 people who cant function without me hit theirs... Somehow that lesson wasn't part of their MBA.
(I'm always happy to help those who are truly trying and willing to do the work!)
They found that the incidence of fake-sounding manager titles spiked at the legal threshold of $455 a week — exactly the cutoff at which a company would be allowed to put workers on salary and sidestep OT payment laws.0: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime
"However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees... Job titles do not determine exempt status. In order for an exemption to apply, an employee’s specific job duties and salary must meet all the requirements of the Department’s regulations."
"Self employed" is used in the same way. Many people in the gig-economy are just employees that are not legally hired because companies want to avoid any responsibility while still profiting from employees.
Additionally there is a limit on the ratio of managers to employees, if it's too high can get you in trouble with the labour board. When my company opened an office here, the first thing they did was hire the managers who then hired the team below them - but due to the limit not everyone could have the manager title at first.
That probably accounts for some of the VP titles. I kinda doubt that all the VPs in your average BofA office are always signing things, and couldn't possibly just go to their boss for a signature, like normal people do.
Banks aren't trying to stiff their traders out of overtime. They do it because a VP has certain signing power as an executive that regular employees don't.
have been through this many times and very HR department on the sell and buy side says the same thing.
Then you might see another leader (Manager of Managers, or “MoM”) who has 5 of these small-team managers, a different title, but a total organization size of 10-15 people.
This feels like a shift from a generation ago when the bigger technology companies wanted flatter organizations and most managers would have teams of 8-12 people, the MoM roles might be 50-80 people, and beyond that executive roles with 100s of people.
Never again will I fall into that trap.
You can go become a senior or lead developer in some companies with only two years of experience, but the head of the local very large international airport is a director.
Apparently, one day, he threatened to quit for another offer. He was placated with some trivial pay increase and promotion to lead engineer (essentially leap-frogging the other seniors in the office in title - but not in pay).
Except no announcement was made; I had no idea he'd been promoted. One day he walks into my office and starts telling me I need to redesign some module using XYZ Design pattern.
"Nope, don't think so - that would be a pointless and unnecessary complication and we have a release on Friday."
"No, you need to do it. I already talked to the Engineering Manager."
I can't remember exactly what I said next, but it wasn't very nice.*
Then I'm getting called into the Engineering Manager's office: "Can you just do the thing he asked you to do, please? I know, I know... we kinda have to humor him on this."
* - of course I remember what I said, and it definitely wasn't nice.
I’m sorry… what? Why did they feel the need to placate a junior at all, let alone with a leap-frog promotion? In what way was a junior engineer not replaceable? Was he someone’s cousin or something?
You could have this flexibility with accrued PTO. I've previously given employees additional, off-the-books time off because they needed and deserved it and when we all got laid off they still got the remaining PTO paid out.
Edit: add section on flexible alternative
Bill Smith: “It's what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.” [1]
1. “State and Main”, by David Mamet
The sheer hypocrisy is mind-blowing!
They ran a call center for merchant credit cards. Every associate on the floor had the title of "account manager." That way, when a customer whose request for a credit limit increase was declined or who had some other complaint asked to "speak to a manger," the low-wage associate could reply "Sir/Ma'am, I AM a manager."
From a business perspective, this seems like a sort of a penny-wise, pound-foolish decision because an employee who has a fancy "Director of X" title is probably more likely able to find employment elsewhere because of their fancy job title. In the long run, a company will probably pay more through having somebody swap jobs, having to pay extra to poach somebody, and pay for recruitment and training.
Somehow I feel the companies are not the problem here. That exemption is pretty ridiculous to have in the first place. Regardless of these "fake" managers, why don't "real" managers deserve OT pay?
Eventually getting to know the union rep it was widely accepted they had added "Manager" to the title of every salaried employee so they didn't have to pay overtime, could call you in after hours, etc.
It made us smile when even 18 year old call centre people had "Manager" in their title on their first day at their first job.
Also, some posters here have said that simply working in IT makes the job exempt. Not true.
Source: family member formerly worked in this field.
$250K for 35hrs a week at a casual company vs $375K at a 996 ByteDance, I know which side of that equation I'd choose.
When a baby with birth problems arrived for poor Jerry, it cost him more than a year's salary.
The result will screw some people for whom the arrangement (contractor / exempt) works will, will make the paperwork tedious, but will overall help most workers.
People gaming the system just cause Bastiat loss.
But at my current company, they will eventually get the new title, not sure of a raise though. Maybe at that company it is kind of a trial.
"The solution, then, is to pay the low-status workers a bit more than they are worth to get them to stay. The high-status workers, in contrast, accept lower pay for the benefit of their lofty positions."
The consequence of this is job title inflation.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of...
If the employee feels like they are being promoted, instead of actually getting a title change and raise, then they will likely not leave.
Like I can see putting up with a title change that comes with a small raise if there is new work that is more interesting and the new role opens up a better pay band, but I can't see why the title itself would motivate someone for very long at all.
Money isn't the only form of compensation a job can provide. Give a low level worker a $0.43 cent raise, and they won't give a crap, it's not enough to change anything. But give them an 'employee of the month' medal and a new title, arguably worth much less than $0.43 cents, and they may actually prefer it! It's something for their resume, something to tell their mother about, these things adds prestige and dignity to a hard job that may have none.
Meanwhile, "employee of the month bagging groceries and promotion to sr. Bagger" doesn't mean much, but a higher level person is likely to value something like a title bump that they use on their resume to get the next job.
Some people, however misguided they may be, don’t think like we do though
Yeah, tell me about it.
I recommend checking out Hillel Wayne's series where he interviews what he calls "crossovers", people that worked both in software and in traditional engineering: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/
Edit: also, there's some muddy waters where you have a degree in engineering (civil, chemical, etc.) but aren't technically an "engineer" unless you have state certification, which is a separate process; but you would nevertheless consider yourself an "engineer"