40 hour work week in jeopardy

Honestly, I am not really sure how I feel about it. As a salaried employee, there are many times I work over my "schedule" and don't get paid for it. As an educator, I do a lot of free work at home, and many of the trainings I attend are for no pay.

At any time I ever did work in an industry where I was paid hourly, the company was always very strict about even letting you go over 40 hours, because it didn't want to pay time and a half. It drives up labor cost big time. There were plenty of times I was willing to put in the extra time, but wasn't allowed to because of going over.

I would be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO upset! Hubby works 15 hours of overtime everyweek and that is how we pay the bills. His over time pay is almost as much as his normal pay!

No freakin' way! Overtime pay is how many of us make enough money to pay the bills. I work 4 hours per pay period, and just that little bit extra is what lets us be comfortable paying the bills, AND buying groceries and gas. In my position now, they would have to raise my salary to match what I normally make for me to continue working extra hours. There are jobs where salary is standard, but as a secretary I certainly don't get paid enough to warrant me working lots of extra hours just for the sheer joy of doing it.

Bush is getting more and more on my bad side.

Bush will be lucky to get 15 votes from union workers next election (one can only hope). This is just stupid. Too many people depend on overtime to pay their bills.

Personally, I've been on salary for 23 years and have never been paid overtime. With the spikes in my work, where I work 60+ hours per week for months on end, I would LOVE to have overtime.

I'm on salary too, and put in over-40 hour weeks each week. In my job, it's expected. In fact, my boss expects me to work at home for several hours on Saturday and Sunday, too. If everyone was switched to salary, I think that we'd see people expected to put in many more hours, since employers won't have the economic penalty. I've read that Americans put in the most hours at work in the world. I guess it's going to get worse.

I've had one administrative job that was salaried, and I was expected to work extra at any given time. But the way it was explained to me is that salaried employees generally get more benefits paid for by the company than hourly, which is what made up for not getting paid extra for the extra hours. For instance, they paid for employee and their families health insurance for salaried employees, but hourly had to pay for their own.

I think the idea of increasing productivity by taking away OT pay is ridiculous. Most people don't have a very good work ethic anymore, and then taking away the bonus of getting extra pay isn't going to make them all-of-a-sudden work more. If anything, the salaries would have to go up, but the work would remain the same.

Here are the current Employment Standards in Ontario. The 60 hour work week did pass, but it is up to each employer whether to implement it. Here's what the Employment Standards Act states:

Hours of Work - The maximum number of hours an employee can be required to work is:

eight hours a day or the number of hours in an established regular workday -- if it is longer than eight hours; and
48 hours a week.
The only way these maximums can be changed is by written agreement.

An Agreement in Writing
An employer and an employee can agree in writing that the employee will work more than:

eight hours a day;
his or her established regular workday -- if it is longer than eight hours; or
48 hours a week.

They can't agree that the employee will work more than 60 hours a week unless the Director of Employment Standards, Ministry of Labour, approves the agreement.

In most cases, an employee can cancel an agreement to work more hours by giving the employer two weeks' written notice. An employer can cancel the agreement by giving the employee reasonable notice.

Meanwhile, there has been growing interest in the European Work Standard in the media. Europe has greater production, more satisfied employees, and less sick/personal leave days than anywhere in the world. They work less hours than North America but enjoy longer vacations, flexible work weeks, and shorter work hours per day.

Why can't North American employers figure out that a healthier, happier, more relaxed worker is going to produce a better end result than an overworked stressed one?

Hmmmm.....