Reaction To Overtime Rule Exposes The Decay In Workers' Rights

Maybe I’m being a little sensitive but I really found the tone of some of the people quoted in the Times article yesterday about the effect of the new overtime rule a little hard to take. Please read the entire article and see what you think.

I just about burst out laughing when Dan Reynolds, the chief executive of Workman’s Publishing, said, “[y]ou really want to bump into the boss at 8 o’clock at night”. Actually, no, I’d rather be home with my family and/or friends at that hour. And, Mr. Reynolds aside, at most of the firms I know, the boss is long gone while the employees are still slaving away. Yes, many times the boss is out wining and dining, trying to round up new business rather than lounging at home – but that’s why he is getting paid the big bucks.  More disturbing was the seeming assumption that the job was so good that working the extra 10 or 20 hours a week was “worth it”. And even more disturbing was the approach of Fox Searchlight which apparently reverse engineers the salary based on a 12-hour day, leaving workers with a base rate of only $8.93 an hour. It is tactics like this that demand a raise in the minimum wage.

When did it become acceptable to hire people with a 40-hour salary and expect 60 hours of work? When did it become OK to essentially not pay people for 30% of the work they do? I guess I know the answer – it was the late 1970s and 1980s when very explicit political choices crushed the bargaining power of workers.  Hopefully, with the raise in the minimum wage, these new overtime rules, and recent gains by organized labor, the tide is turning in workers’ favor.