"Chinese overtime" (and "textiled hikers")

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> I hadn't previously encountered this entry in the catalog that
> currently includes Chinese fire drills and Chinese landings and
> Chinese home runs, as discussed in previous threads. Â An article in
> this week's New Haven Advocate, our weekly alternative paper, details
> a suit filed by Save-a-Lot grocery by assistant manager Ed Roach on
> the grounds that "under the store policy, Roach made less money [per
> hour] the more hours he put in", i.e. a lower hourly rate for each
> additional hour he worked. Â Some web sites on the practice of Chinese
> overtime:
> http://www.overtime-flsa.com/what-is-chinese-overtime
> ("an employee is paid a fixed salary each workweek for hours that
> vary up and down from week to week, the employer may use an overtime
> calculation method called 'fixed salary for fluctuating workweeks'")
> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060707171900AAFIqtf
> http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/h_regular_rate_salaried_nx.html
>

This is an all-too-common practice. In general, lower- and
middle-management personnel have no access to union protection that
would require the payment of overtime, even in union shops.So, if
something doesn't get done, it's up to lower- and middle-management to
take up the slack, getting no "premium pay" - capitalismspeak for
"overtime pay" - regardless of the number of overtime hours worked.

At Harvard, the distinction is between "exempt" human resources and
"non-exempt" ones. These terms predate my own connection with Harvard.
So, I'm not sure of their official meanings. But, in my day, after
Harvard became a union shop, these terms were supposed by us polloi to
mean, "excluded from union protection" and "included under union
protection. And it was the case that the exempt worked as long and as
hard as need be to get the job done, at a fixed salary.

Those protected by the union received premium pay after the first five
hours - the work-week is defined as 35 hours - of overtime. (Exclusion
of the lunch-"hour" from the work-week is common, wherever it's
feasible to do it.)

The exempt were once referred to as "officers [of the University]."
But I've been given to understand that, since my retirement, the union
has forced Harvard to end the that practice.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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