Paid time off may be replacing overtime

I sure am glad I belong to a strong union. That **** would never fly at contract time. Besides, in my line of work, someone always has to be here, so they can't offer "time off".

 

"Employees could accrue up to 160 hours of compensatory time off annually, and companies would be required to pay cash for any unused time at the end of the year."

I can live with this...Although I'm salaried and there is no such thing as paid overtime...

It's kinda like comp time...taking a day here and there...going to the Astros business man's special, etc...

However, if you depend on OT to get you through the bills, then this would suck...

 

My wife works for the State and racks up tons of "paid time off"... comp time, in other words, instead of overtime. She rarely gets to use but a fraction of it and after a couple of years it goes away. I don't think this is a good idea. At this rate, the Administration is going to make unions very popular again, imo.

 

Am I missing something here?

The article says it’s currently illegal to offer time off for some employees, which seems absurd.

Also, the employee has the option of choosing whether to take the time off or get pay. The employer gets the say on when you can take the time, but if the time wasn't convenient, wouldn't you just take the pay instead?? They're both at the same rate.

If the employer would rather you take time then pay, the employer will have to ensure the scheduling works for the employee too.

As long as the employee has the option of being paid out, and that option is protected, I fail to see the concern here.

 

I know many people who have hourly jobs in which the person will work a 10 hour day, for instance, and then be told to go home a couple of hours early the next day to make sure they don't end up with overtime. This is just kind of a variation of that.

Personally, I don't like it because it goes against what overtime was supposed to be - a punishment to the business for working someone longer than the standard work week. If it is necessary for someone to work longer than the standard week, then the appropriate payment should be made in that week.

Of course, if that's the case, then I guess when work slacks off, there should be no problem with sending people home early without pay.

 

This is ALMOST correct. Overtime was supposed to punish companies for making people work lots of hours in a week, BUT, the reason was unemployment.

The theory is that if you made a company pay overtime, they would just hire extra workers to get the manhours but avoid overtime.

Well, in most cases, the plan backfired...when employees were offered overtime...they WANTED to work more than 40 hours for the higher rate of pay. The problem for the company was that they had to pay the overtime, but that "punishment" of paying overtime was not large enough to cover the costs of hiring a new working and training them...so companies just nutted up and paid the overtime without actually hiring new workers.

Well, overtime became so popular that unions wanted overtime, not extra workers...so unions did what they could to discourage the hiring of extra workers...so unemployment actually was not affected by the overtime policy.

What did happen, however, is workers now enjoyed extra money to spend, so workers that were lower middle class, started moving up the scale a little, which is good for the economy (obviously). BUT, one bad thing did happen as well...companies now had to pay their employees more, thus driving up costs...well...who pays for a companies' costs?...that's right...the consumer...whose the consumer?....the workers (a section of the consumers). So overtime is actually a tool of inflation and inflation degrades the amount of money people make...so overtime actually balanced out the extra costs of living...so overtime has actually had no OVERALL economic benifit...however, I can see how it would benifit some individual workers that decide to save rather than spend, thus negating some of the affects of price inflation.

Whew. So that whole thing actually doesn't affect this conversation at all. So I'll shut up now.

 

But I appreciated the explanation and some of the history behind it.

 

If I'm reading this correctly, it says that the worker gets to choose OT or Paid Hours Off, so I don't see the real issue.

When I worked for minimum wage at Disney, and they took out rent from our paychecks, overtime was the only real way to live comfortably.

Can someone tell me what's wrong with this idea?

 

Well I appreciate you appreciating it...

Thanks