"Chinese overtime" (and "textiled hikers")

[Victor Steinbok]

The term "exempt" is quite common and appears to have little to do with
Harvard.

"Officer" was still used at Harvard in 1995--my last ID was from that
year. I don't know when you retired or the term is still in use in some
areas and not others. The distinction was between "officers" and
"staff"--to sort those who were not faculty or students into academic
and non-academic classes. Since I was never faculty, I don't know what
faculty ID said.

Federal law mandates 15 minutes of "lunch" break for every 4 hours of
work. I am not sure what it says about paying for it--it's been a while
since I looked and every job I held since high-school covered a paid
lunch break.

"Exempt" does not mean that one is obligated to work overtime--that
depends on the individual contract. It only means that you are not going
to be paid premium rates--or, in some cases, paid at all for extra hours
worked. Again, the specifics depend on the contract. My early stint as
editorial freelancer had a 40-hr hard cap per week. This meant that if I
had a 60-hr week, I could take 2 1/2 days off the following week and
still sign a time card for 40 hours. The practice has since been
disallowed for hourly employees, but term employees get comp time where
I used to work--i.e., they get extra vacation time (or some equivalent)
exactly matching the overtime hours, but they get no extra salary for
overtime.

Whether overtime is mandatory or optional depends on contract. IKEA
allows workers to refuse overtime 8 times--after that, you're fired.

     VS-)

On 6/18/2011 10:03 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> 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

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