Another labor law thread

[Greenman]

A friend of mine is a manager at Home Depot, and since he's management, he?s a salaried employee. That?s all well and good, he even makes decent money, but the issue is the hours he has to work. Apparently, all Home Depot managers work 60 hour weeks, 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. It?s not uncommon for him to have to do 14 hour days.

When you compare his income to what an hourly employee would earn working those same hours, it comes out to just under $17 an hour, assuming time and a half for anything over 40 hours per week.

My question is, is that legal? Is it common?

 

[waggy]

welcome to land of managment and salaried employees.

 

[chambersc]

Perfectly legal and perfectly common.

 

[DeadByDawn]

yes to both your questions.

 

[dmcowen674]

Swab ye deck matey's Swab

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: waggy
welcome to land of managment and salaried employees.

QFT and [/thread]

 

[dullard]

Everyone above me is correct.

 

[MrChad]

I'm a salaried consultant and frequently work 50- or 60hour weeks. My company offers comp. time (adds vacation hours) for every hour I work per week over 50 (I believe, might be over 55).

But yes, "unpaid overtime" is very common in the world of salaried employees.

 

[FoBoT]

yes

if he doesn't like it, he can work at McDonalds for $6/hr

 

[Greenman]

That just astounds me. I would NEVER ask one of my employee's to work for free. And back when I was an employee, if anyone had even sugested that I put in 60 hours and get paid for 40 I wouldn't have even responded, I would have turned around and walked out the door. Why on earth does anyone put up with such maddness? More to the point, who wants to be a slave to a company that without doubt would drop you like a bad habbit the first second they find a way to get your job done cheaper?

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: Greenman
That just astounds me. I would NEVER ask one of my employee's to work for free. And back when I was an employee, if anyone had even sugested that I put in 60 hours and get paid for 40 I wouldn't have even responded, I would have turned around and walked out the door. Why on earth does anyone put up with such maddness? More to the point, who wants to be a slave to a company that without doubt would drop you like a bad habbit the first second they find a way to get your job done cheaper?

managment usually gets better "perks" also. as in more vacation time, the ability to take a day off if needed, better insurance, better pay etc.

also being mangment you are usually one of the last to be laid off.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Greenman
That just astounds me. I would NEVER ask one of my employee's to work for free. And back when I was an employee, if anyone had even sugested that I put in 60 hours and get paid for 40 I wouldn't have even responded, I would have turned around and walked out the door. Why on earth does anyone put up with such maddness? More to the point, who wants to be a slave to a company that without doubt would drop you like a bad habbit the first second they find a way to get your job done cheaper?

No one works for free. Salaried workers get paid quite well.

As a salaried worker you get paid $X to get jobs A, B, and C completed. If you work 10 hours a week and do your job, you got paid $X/10 per hour. If you take 60 hours a week to do that same job, you got paid $X/60 per hour. The hourly wage is not a defined number for salaried workers. If you don't want to get paid $X for doing A, B, and C, then get another job. It is that simple.

Salaried workers get paid far more than most hourly workers. Salaried workers get paid vacations, benefits, etc that hourly workers typically don't have. The tradeoff is that salaried workers may work far more than 40 hours a week. If you don't like it, don't take the job. With many salaried jobs, 60-80 hours per week is normal.

That is just the way it is.

 

[j00fek]

its legal, move along

 

[chambersc]

marginal pay (from regular manager to salaried) + marginal benefits = OT pay. If you don't think it's fair, don't accept the position or quit.

 

[vi edit]

I've been salaried for the last 7 years in three different positions. In each job it was pretty explicitly explained to me what the expectations were. In some of the them I knew up front before applying what the expectations were.

Most people know full well what they are getting into when taking a salaried job.

 

[jupiter57]

I'm salaried too. I still put in a LOT of hours, though.
Then again, my "salary" is really good!

What makes it worthwhile, to me, is the regular paychecks and the fact that if I want to take time off, I'm not "docked".

 

[Kanalua]

What don't you understand about salaried position? You get paid a set amount regardless of the hours they put in. Hourly positions get paid buy how many hours they work.

If your friend doesn't like it, ask for a demotion to stocker, or cashier.

 

[krunchykrome]

It's called a salary. There's nothing affecting labor laws in this situation. Just common practice among different professions. You think that's bad, try Auditing.

 

[Greenman]

Thank you all for responding. I have to admit that I had no idea that requiring 50 to 60 hours a week was the norm. I've been self employed most of my working life, and always thought salaried employee's were on the gravey train. Looks like you all work a bit harder than I thought.
A few years back I worked for an engineering frim for a couple years as a project manager. No one ever mentioned working late or weekends to me, and it was rare that I ever put in more than 40 hours a week. Perhaps I just never got behind.

 

[BoomerD]

There are "exempt managers" and non-exempt managers". Exempt (obviously) are exempt from being paid overtime. Non-exempt get overtime. In addition to the federal wage & hour standards, many states have their own laws pertaining to overtime for management.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Greenman
A few years back I worked for an engineering frim for a couple years as a project manager. No one ever mentioned working late or weekends to me, and it was rare that I ever put in more than 40 hours a week. Perhaps I just never got behind.

Congratulations, you were a craptastic project manager then.

In project management it's not you who gets behind. It's the oddball bug in the programming for the new system that takes the developers 3 days to fix and brings the entire staging system down in the meantime. It's the vendor coming back to you with a product that misses several major specifications and then balking at the work required to fix them. Every project has pieces that require all hands to be on deck.

If you truly were a project manager and you didn't have to work more than 40 hours in a week you either worked for a very, very, very tiny company, padded your timelines by an obscene amount, or, most likely, were oblivious to the hell your lack of attention to the project was causing your analysts.

ZV <-- Business Analyst in a Project Management Office.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: Greenman
A few years back I worked for an engineering frim for a couple years as a project manager. No one ever mentioned working late or weekends to me, and it was rare that I ever put in more than 40 hours a week. Perhaps I just never got behind.

Congratulations, you were a craptastic project manager then.

In project management it's not you who gets behind. It's the oddball bug in the programming for the new system that takes the developers 3 days to fix and brings the entire staging system down in the meantime. It's the vendor coming back to you with a product that misses several major specifications and then balking at the work required to fix them. Every project has pieces that require all hands to be on deck.

If you truly were a project manager and you didn't have to work more than 40 hours in a week you either worked for a very, very, very tiny company, padded your timelines by an obscene amount, or, most likely, were oblivious to the hell your lack of attention to the project was causing your analysts.

ZV <-- Business Analyst in a Project Management Office.

Don't be rude because you had a bad day. It's entirely possible to be a PM and work forty hour work weeks without sucking, in a company that handles projects correctly.

To the OP, this is very common. What's interesting is that the government has a say in what an exempt and nonexempt role are. It's not just randomly decided. Job duties and whatnot play into it.

 

[mercanucaribe]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Greenman
That just astounds me. I would NEVER ask one of my employee's to work for free. And back when I was an employee, if anyone had even sugested that I put in 60 hours and get paid for 40 I wouldn't have even responded, I would have turned around and walked out the door. Why on earth does anyone put up with such maddness? More to the point, who wants to be a slave to a company that without doubt would drop you like a bad habbit the first second they find a way to get your job done cheaper?

No one works for free. Salaried workers get paid quite well.

As a salaried worker you get paid $X to get jobs A, B, and C completed. If you work 10 hours a week and do your job, you got paid $X/10 per hour. If you take 60 hours a week to do that same job, you got paid $X/60 per hour. The hourly wage is not a defined number for salaried workers. If you don't want to get paid $X for doing A, B, and C, then get another job. It is that simple.

Salaried workers get paid far more than most hourly workers. Salaried workers get paid vacations, benefits, etc that hourly workers typically don't have. The tradeoff is that salaried workers may work far more than 40 hours a week. If you don't like it, don't take the job. With many salaried jobs, 60-80 hours per week is normal.

That is just the way it is.

80 hours a week? You have got to be kidding... I'm amazed at how many people value life so little that they'd waste it away working.

 

[Turin39789]

My father has been offered a salary for years now at his current job. He usually tallies up how much he would make with overtime and on call time, and it's never worth it. He then usually tells someone where they can their salary.

Yea, he's a much more valuable employee than I will ever be.