I didn’t learn that my last job was classified as overtime-exempt until I had already quit my other job and was signing contracts on my first day. It was advertised as 9-6 but after starting I found out that was just the minimum hours.
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I counted the hours I put in and it’s like 15-20,000 total. That’s a lot of time to devote to a restaurant.
I work twelve to fifteen hours a day, four days a week and get paid $36,000 in salary, plus tips. The tips are probably putting me close to $40,000 a year. I’m 43, turning 44. It doesn’t sound very old, but working these kinds of hours, you can’t do it forever. I’m reaching the end of my ability to work that pace.
Read More"As a manager you just stayed to get the work done."
They wanted to save on payroll as much as possible, so if an hourly employee called out sick and you were overtime-exempt, the expectation is that you're going to stay. And you’d be doing literally the same job as the person who called out, and then also your other job. Some hourly person called out sick, and I'm a free body. It was pretty common to be there for 13 hour days.
Read MoreWashington employers will take $4 billion of time and money from salaried workers — this year alone
Time is money, and employers are taking both — to the tune of $4 billion worth from salaried workers in our state this year alone. That startling figure is a rough estimate of what is lost by salaried workers who have been working more and more hours — without getting paid for it.
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"I thought a salaried job had prestige"
I think mothers are especially limited in their job mobility because of the expectation of overtime. My ex-husband worked on salary, often putting in 50 - 60 hours a week, which limited his availability for the kids, but also my availability for work, especially after we got divorced. I always had to be careful to take jobs where there wasn't that expectation of overtime, because someone needed to be there for the kids. His career advanced, and mine stayed stagnant, and I paid the cost of his additional hours in that sense.”
Read More"time to myself has become a more precious commodity to me"
What it comes down to is that I have more days behind me than in front of me, and I want to have time to enjoy my life unburdened by work issues and problems. I'm exchanging the limited hours of my existence for the ability to afford both essentials and luxuries. That creates a fine balance between working to live and living to work. And my employer gets greater benefit from my effort than I do.
Read More"I am told that I need to stay until the job is done, even if that means sleeping at the store"
This treatment of grocery store managers is standard in the industry. It’s how everyone is treated at this store and at the last store where I worked. And the managers just expect to be treated this way.
Read MoreWhat we said at the federal Department of Labor "listening session" on overtime rules
“What you hear when you listen to workers is that the issue of restoring overtime protections isn’t just about money. It’s about time. It’s about making employers value their employees’ time in the only way they understand — by making them pay for it again.”
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"The idea is absurd and needs to be abolished"
“As the system is set up now, competition almost forces employers to hire as few workers as possible and work them as many hours as possible.”
Read MoreOfficial comments on overtime rulemaking
Because the threshold effectively does not exist, all an employer has to do is decide an employee’s job duties make them “exempt”, and then — poof — they don’t need to pay anything extra for any extra hours over 40 in a week.
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