Time is money, and employers are taking both — to the tune of $4 billion worth from salaried workers in our state this year alone. That startling figure is a rough estimate of what is lost by salaried workers who have been working more and more hours — without getting paid for it.
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"I thought a salaried job had prestige"
I think mothers are especially limited in their job mobility because of the expectation of overtime. My ex-husband worked on salary, often putting in 50 - 60 hours a week, which limited his availability for the kids, but also my availability for work, especially after we got divorced. I always had to be careful to take jobs where there wasn't that expectation of overtime, because someone needed to be there for the kids. His career advanced, and mine stayed stagnant, and I paid the cost of his additional hours in that sense.”
Read More"time to myself has become a more precious commodity to me"
What it comes down to is that I have more days behind me than in front of me, and I want to have time to enjoy my life unburdened by work issues and problems. I'm exchanging the limited hours of my existence for the ability to afford both essentials and luxuries. That creates a fine balance between working to live and living to work. And my employer gets greater benefit from my effort than I do.
Read More"I am told that I need to stay until the job is done, even if that means sleeping at the store"
This treatment of grocery store managers is standard in the industry. It’s how everyone is treated at this store and at the last store where I worked. And the managers just expect to be treated this way.
Read MoreWhat we said at the federal Department of Labor "listening session" on overtime rules
“What you hear when you listen to workers is that the issue of restoring overtime protections isn’t just about money. It’s about time. It’s about making employers value their employees’ time in the only way they understand — by making them pay for it again.”
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"The idea is absurd and needs to be abolished"
“As the system is set up now, competition almost forces employers to hire as few workers as possible and work them as many hours as possible.”
Read MoreOfficial comments on overtime rulemaking
Because the threshold effectively does not exist, all an employer has to do is decide an employee’s job duties make them “exempt”, and then — poof — they don’t need to pay anything extra for any extra hours over 40 in a week.
Read MoreTell L&I: Nobody should have to work without getting paid for it.
We're asking the state to require that any worker who’s paid less than three times the minimum wage (about $75,000 a year) gets time-and-a-half if they work more than 40 hours a week — regardless of whether or not they're hourly or salaried, and no matter what fancy title their boss gives them.
Read More"We were generally required to work 45 hours per week or so, but could work as many as 70 to 80."
“Because it didn’t cost my employer anything to keep me working whatever hours they wanted, they didn’t have to take my time into consideration. And so they didn’t.”
Read More"my annual salary was $34,000 a year, with no paid overtime"
As a full-time employee in administration and development, my annual salary was $34,000 a year, with no paid overtime. I was responsible for training volunteers outside of normal work hours, working programmed events that took place from 6 - 10 PM, and administering our annual gala and other fundraising events associated with a major capital campaign, so I frequently worked overtime without compensation.
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