Compensation for Salaried employees working overtime

OK so this is off topic but I didn't know a better place to ask. I also signed up with an alternate ID because I’m trying to remain anonymous to people who may be able to read my old posts and determine who I am or who my employer may be.

I am a salaried controls/electrical engineer for a machine builder located in the USA who sometimes travels and works long hours and/or weekends. I receive no extra compensation for this and there is no official comp time policy. I sometimes feel taken advantage of by this practice, especially when I travel with hourly people who do get overtime plus a daily bonus in the $30 range for their travel. I have talked to my superior and have been told that the policy won’t be changed but I can call in sick at various times throughout the year to create my own comp time. To me this feels wrong as I’ve been here 10+ years and have only called in sick maybe 3 or 4 times. We get no official number of sick days but rather just take them as required. Too many in a row do require doctor’s note.

This came to a head on a recent, very large project where I again voiced my disagreement about the lack of an overtime/travel compensation policy. I’ve been going the extra mile on this project and when I brought it up, my superior flipped it back to me and has asked what I desire in light of the policy remaining unchanged. So the goal of this message is to try to ascertain how other companies, especially OEM’s, treat their salaried engineers when they travel and/or work significant amounts of overtime. I'm not trying to be unreasonable. Just looking for something fair.

I will say that our company has no service department. So depending on the complexity of the project and the scope of the work required, engineers often travel for start-ups, commissioning, and even more difficult service and support requests. The rest of the time, hourly people like mechanics and electricians will travel.

Sounds like my work, although my boss usually lets us take unofficial comp days before/after a trip.

Earlier in my career I worked for three different OEMs. All of them offered some form of compensation for field service overtime. It was always straight time, never time-and-a-half. It ranged from a high of whatever number of hours I submitted to all hours submitted beyond some number of hours per month or quarter.

I'm salaried, no overtime, no compensation for travel, nothing. I'm paid the same if I work 40hrs or 80 hrs in a week. The fun part is, that I have to report 40hrs in a week, so If I travel and work an 80hr week, the next week I still have to put in my 40. I traveled to Nigeria about 1 month ago for two weeks no travel premium or anything. Sure is swell being salary isn't it.

where I am now salaried people getting double time OT based on their 40hrs per week at their annual rate.

of course this place is crazy I am hourly but get roughly 4x OT for working major holidays like Canada Day or xmas and I am scheduled to work anyway

I'm not compensated more in my current role, but I rarely exceed 45 hours (so far). Previous life I was in a similar position, got abused with it and after a large project where I traveled for 85% of the year working 70+ hours I learned my lesson. Same issue though, I could only record 40 hours for the accounting system so the extra hours never got tracked. I should have kept a formal record of it all and sent it to the upper management team to show that I was over-loaded and that we needed additional resources. They did give comp time if you worked a weekend, so I had 8 weeks of it by the end of the year. Of course "policy" stated that couldn't be carried over into the new year! Boss was good about honoring it informally though.

After that the company did put in a policy to compensate people in that situation, something like if they were onsite for 11 or more days they got and extra $75 a day? Not great but adds up if you're gone for 4-6 weeks at a time. Another SI I worked for gave comp time for extra hours worked which accumulated quarterly and had a cash-out option each quarter. Was nice but I know it was a huge accounting hassle to track it.

Now I just set limits on my working hours. If the accounting system shows I can only work 40 hours a week, well the project schedule better reflect that.

Feels very wrong to me (not referring to what Paul just wrote, I'm talking about the original question). Companies expecting their employees to work overtime should see their employees expecting to get compensated for their efforts. I often work some extra hours, sometimes a lot when there is either a serious issue for a client or a project with a tight deadline. Work at client site is almost always long days for me. I either get paid or compensated in time. In my opinion it takes two to tango.

I'm not trying to be unreasonable. Just looking for something fair.

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I'm going to use my alt account as well, in the interest of candor.

Engineering seems to have a high degree of unusual compensation plans for professionals. Straight salary is common, as are limited overtime plans.

This thread is necessarily going to include some complaining and comparison of miseries. I've just deleted three paragraphs of mine because it's not terribly helpful to discuss what's unfair and unsatisfactory, so let's focus on what works and what could be better.

My company is a machinery OEM with about 30% of our systems out of town or out of the country. Electricians and mechanics get overtime in accordance with state law, wherever they work.

Engineers get straight time for anything billable to the project.

Some engineers, including me, donate quite a bit of our time to the project, largely because there are annual bonuses when projects are successful. This allows for an extra effort that's reflected in success, not in timesheets.

My company has a straight 10-days-per-year paid time off benefit, and you can use it for sick days or vacation. The 10-day benefit applies to all employees (except the owners). You cannot earn more through overtime or through length-of-service.

If I were in your shoes, I would suggest that the paid-time-off process be formalized so that you get a base PTO every year, and can earn additional PTO. You should consider what your state's accrued-benefit rules will do; in my state, such benefits expire at the end of the year but in California they generally roll over.

In the end, nobody can stick up for your rights in the workplace except you. If you've worked under a compensation plan you resent for 10+ years, then it's unlikely that the compensation plan will change unless employees take concrete action tied to the compensation plan.

Once upon a time I quit a job because of the extensive unpaid travel and overtime. While all of the engineers had been complaining about it for years, it didn't change until I quit. The extra workload and the concrete example that quitting didn't mean hunger and homelessness sparked the other engineers to negotiate a new overtime policy.

Document your times!

What state do you live in?

The labor board has rules to protect even salaried people working overtime.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/overtimepay


https://www.google.com/#q=overtime+pay+for+salaried+employees

It is only a grey area if you are a manager..
AND regrettably it may depend on how much you make....which I see as pathetic. Regardless of my income, I should be protected from being taken advantage of.

I come from very different laws, but we have similar discussions and variation. You can not change the system. Never give the extra mile thinking you will be rewarded (but do it freely ofc at will). Change attitude, adapt or leave.

NetNathan said:

Document your times!

What state do you live in?

The labor board has rules to protect even salaried people working overtime.

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I dunno about that...

Salary = Exempt as in "exempted from being paid (for more than 40-hours/week) overtime pay"...

Only salary employees earning less than $47,476 (as of 2016) are eligible for overtime pay; prior to 2016 the threshold was $23,660.

That is the law of the land...However, some employers, the ones aware that their company's most valuable 'possessions' are their employees, will 'voluntarily' reward dedication and professionalism...

As previously stated, it is up to the employee to decide who to work for.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17a_overview.pdf

One of the great benefits of my job has been traveling the world, learning more about the societies outside of my prosperous hometown.

Visiting remote work-camps that I thought were squalid and hazardous allowed me to hear stories from the guys who had just come from Nigeria and considered these camps to be luxurious.

I had a very candid discussion one night, outside the barbed wire, with a security guard. My wages were 10x his, and we talked about our backgrounds and what sort of opportunities there were for advanced education in our respective home countries.

It was enlightening to discuss the difference in our wages, and the distinction between fairness and equality, and his willingness we both had to do these jobs on the opposite side of the planet so we could send money home.

dmargineau, you'll find a lot of references on the Internet about the DOL Final Rule that would have raised the threshold ($455 vs $913/week) for the managerial, administrative, and learned professional exemptions to overtime under the FLSA.

That's because everyone expected that to take effect. The DOL had been working on it for years, and it had survived challenges both at the legislative and court levels. In my opinion the timing of the injunction that blocked it (just two weeks after Election Day) was not a coincidence.

So for now, that element of labor law is set back to 2016. The rest of the country's jurisprudence appears aimed for roughly 1862.

I agree some states require OT even for salary employees
But I have always been of the opinion that you negotiated the salary when you took the job you are free to renegotiate at any time or you are free to walk it they don’t want to negotiate. We eliminated indentured servants years ago.
If your talent is any good I am sure that others would be happy to hire you on you may even bring some clients with you.
I do see a lot of people working way below the value for the trade but they are free to do that.
It just makes it difficult for good talent to get the wage they deserve.

As for not reporting the actual time on a job is a big mistake. Let’s say if you actually work 14 hours but record only the 8 to show what they pay. If you get hurt on the job and try to collect workman’s comp ins. They could deny it, they would clam it did not happen on the job and then charge you with ins fraud
And they do watch out for these kind of things.
All true time on a job must be documented for each employee weather an hourly or salaried.
In some places no documenting the time can get you fined

Eddie Willers said:

In my opinion the timing of the injunction that blocked it (just two weeks after Election Day) was not a coincidence.

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No, it probably wasn't a coincidence......Actually, there is 'waiting to be passed' Congress legislation intending to return the 'Exempt' threshold to the pre-2016 levels...