Sunday, January 17, 2021

Management Illegally Bans Overtime Pay, IT Gets It All Back


Horrible management always seems to get it in their heads that they can make people work crazy hours without having to pay for it. In this case, IT did their research and worked out a plan to get the astronomical amount of overtime they earned. Here's another incompetent manager who banned overtime and had it backfire.

1.

Text - Posted by u/jbanelaw 10 hours ago 2 4 3 Manager: "Company Policy Is We Do NOT Pay For Overtime", Tech: "Sure, OK, Whatever" Epic Sometimes as a consultant you get to see how an office functions from an outsider perspective. Since you are an independent contractor the company treats you differently than an employee. Also, just due to the nature of contract work, your engagement is usually short term. This makes you a temporary fixture and sometimes are just treated as the "fly on the wall"

2.

Text - This is one of those tales. Not so much about the nuts and bolts of tech support, but more about the people and some good old fashion just desserts. Background... As a consultant, you are always going to be the "IT Guy" whether you like it or not. No matter how you market your services every single company is going to assume you can do anything with a computer. And, when business is slow, this is not necessarily a bad thing if you just need work. About 10 years ago I found myself in a sit

3.

Text - Easy stuff. The company had its own IT department, but just needed some extra hands. I was going to be one of three outside contractors that would deploy some workstations, do some server admin work, and set up some other equipment for a new department. The money wasn't the best, but it was time I had free and it was all swing shift work (meaning no traffic and I get to sleep in). Not bad. The First Day I report as requested about 3PM and talk to our contact. He was a Senior Engineer in c

4.

Text - I take the server work and see my contact who the System Administrator. Figuring he was probably gone for the day as it was mid-evening I was just going to leave him a note asking him to call me, but to my surprise he is at his desk. In fact, just about everyone in the IT department are milling around. Didn't think much of it at the time, just that it was one busy department and the guys must be pulling double shifts. He shows me the systems and I get to work. Around midnight we are wrapp

5.

Text - I left thinking, "man that is a busy place.those guys must really be pulling down the overtime...I wonder what is going on they have so much work..." as I walked out the door that night. Soon enough I would find out the deal. Friday Night Head to the work site a little early on Friday figuring if we all pull a long night we should be able to wrap it up and all get our weekend back. Things are going great and we are ahead of schedule so the Senior Engineer offers to take us out a local din

6.

Text - At the diner: Senior Engineer (SE): "I want to thank you guys for all your hard work. We are all overworked and when we got approval to contract out this job everyone was excited." IT Guy (me): "Hey glad to be of service. Looks like you guys are crazy busy. Is everyone pulling doubles and doing weekends to handle your ticket load?" SE: "Oh we are understaffed so we all have to pull extra hours..." Me: "That sucks, but must be some great overtime..."

7.

Text - SE: "Overtime...not really...we are all salaried...some loophole or something...we just put in the time because we all need the job right now..." The conversation trailed off from there, but it left me thinking, "in this state most IT workers are eligible for overtime as a matter of law...there is no loophole like that.something isn't right.." Back at the work site... I'm in the network closet with the Systems Administrator hooking up some ports and finishing the server work. He is a frie

8.

Text - Systems Admin (SA): "Oh yeah, it has been like this for a year. 60 hours is a light week these days. It is bullshit." Me: "Yeah the other guy said you don't get overtime..." SA: Laughs. "That is what the boss tell us. Let me show you something." He pulls up an email exchange he had with his manager. It is dated about 10 months ago and makes the very point I thought that the entire department should be getting overtime and the law requires it. His boss' response in bold and caps was "IT IS

9.

Text - Me: "Look I'm not a lawyer, but you might want to call up the labor department..I'm pretty sure it is illegal for you to not be getting overtime..." Then to my surprise, the SA pulls up another email from his personal account. "Oh it is blatantly illegal. I asked a lawyer and this was his response." (He showed me a memo explaining the law and that most likely a lawsuit would be successful. This was dated about nine months ago.) Me: (confused) "So you guys know you should be getting overti

10.

Text - SA: "No but we will. Here is the kicker. According to the lawyer the labor department will look back at the hours we put in for the last 12 months and award us retroactive overtime. So all of us just log our time and keep records then in about a month we are going to file a claim all together. The company is going to be on the hook for all that overtime and they won't be allowed to fire any of us for reporting them either." (Then the coup de grace...) SA: "We all figured when this whole t

11.

Text - Damn. That is some cold stone strategizing. Me: "How many hours do you think you guys have piled up?" SA: "Hard to tell. Everyone keeps their own paper logs to keep it quiet. We also don't talk about it too much so nothing gets out but last time we met outside of work it was a boat load of time. I figure, for myself, they will owe me about 13-14 months of salary in overtime and when it is all said and done, add up damages, penalties, interest, it will probably total almost two years of pa

12.

Text - We finished up the job that night. I exchanged contact information with a few guys and said if they had any other contract work to think about giving me a call. That was it, until... Three Months Later... I am at another job and see an email come in from the Systems Administrator, subject line "Overtime Claim": "Hey IT Guy - Hope you are doing well. We all ended up filing a big overtime claim with the state and the company fired us for supposedly falsifying our timesheets. The lawyer is s

13.

Text - I agreed to talk to the investigator and got a call about a week later. He asked me some routine questions about times and dates and wanted me to email him over some proof I did the job. Then he started going into the details of the case. "We got this company for probably a million in overtime and damages between all the guys in the department plus the firing is probably illegal so that is going to be another few hundred thousand on top of it. The insurance company wants to settle and onc

14.

Text - "Just wanted to let you know we settled this whole thing. Company caved pretty quick once it was clear we kept honest logs of our time and the local management violated parent company regulations for the sake of making their site budget look better. Can't go into details, but we all got sizable checks, enough to pay off some loans, and go back to school. I'll have to find a new job but after I get my grad degree that shouldn't be an issue. Appreciate you talking to the investigators. Than

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Tagged: job , work , legal , lol , pay , overtime , payment , illegal , funny , money , win
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