lars@salt.acc.com (Lars J Poulsen) (05/20/89)
In article <18397@cup.portal.com> Tom_G_Madden@cup.portal.com writes: >Opinions please >--------------- >The company I work for is going to adopt a formal comp time policy. In an >effort to make this complete, I am hoping system managers and anyone else >who does comp time would share their insights on the topic. The law is fairly clear: If you work overtime, you should get paid for it. There is an escape clause intended for senior managers that are expected to "get the job done" rather than to work xx hours per week, but most companies are trying to circumvent this by declaring all salaried employees to be "overtime exempt". The courts have not generally overruled this; if this country had a stronger union movement, like Europe has, this would have been corrected. But really: If you are REQUIRED to work 40 hours, you are ENTITLED to be paid when DIRECTED to work more. The escape is that you (the supervisor) never tell your people that they have to work overtime. You tell them that they MUST PRODUCE THE RESULTS BY XXX DATE and use their best judgment to figure out how to do this. Then, when they work overtime, it is voluntary !!! I hate this doublespeak, but that is the legal way to circumvent the problem. Here at ACC, we have no official comp time policy, but most departments have an informal actual half-policy. >1. Is hour for hour fair (i guess so) but does it cause scheduling problems > when the user goes to take the owed time. Hour for hour is not unreasonable, if you give people some flexibility in when to take it. If you tell them when to take it, you should give more than hour for hour (after all, hourly people would have gotten a higher rate for overtime than for base time). >2. Should their be a maximum of how much time can be "banked" ? This is really a scheduling issue. >3. A threshold where some overtime (like 4 hours a week) is given to > the company and THEN hour for hour Did you just redefine the work week to 44 hours ? >5. Have the time put toward vacation weeks which might make project scheduling > easier. This is what I'd do, especially if your finance department will let the payroll system track it for you. I, too, would be interested in hearing what other people do. I would like to see overtime turn into vacation. For myself, I solved the problem by becoming a part time employee (30 hours). I now get paid for the first 10 hours of overtime. That is a good incentive to get the heck out of the office before it runs over the limit. / Lars Poulsen <lars@salt.acc.com> (800) 222-7308 or (805) 963-9431 ext 358 ACC Customer Service Affiliation stated for identification only My employer probably would not agree if he knew what I said !!