Going overboard about overtime...

A recent department meeting at the collge I work at discussed the new federal overtime rules. These are the rules that MoveOn.org illustrated in their ad with a guy wearing a hardhat and an voice saying that Bush wants to eliminate overtime pay and is not on your side.

Except for the fact that the protections cover a much smaller group of people than 8 million, and the kind of people who it exempts from being required to pay overtime aren't the kind of people who wear hardhats. Angry Red at Redstate.org examined this a while ago.

One reaction I had was that even if the government didn't require people to pay overtime, some employers might choose to keep paying workers overtime. I figured I was one of those people - I consider myself a computer professional, but I work a ton of overtime providing support to a remote campus on Saturdays. I'm not a big fan of getting up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings, but for overtime I'm there, and it's helping me reach my goal of buying a house in the next year or so.

When I look at the actual DOL rules for computer people I don't think that they could actually pay me salary if they wanted to - the definition is very narrow, and pretty much limited to programers and analysts, not tech support drones like myself. It also says that anyone paid under $27.63 an hour or $455 a week has to be paid overtime.

Yup, the nerve of Bush taking away the overtime of computer programers who make at least $28 an hour... and based on the moveon ad, apparently wear hardhats to work.

One interesting thing I learned at the staff meeting where I work is that schools are trying to figure out how to catagorize certain jobs, such as sports coaches and student life employees who live in dorms. Call me a crazy, but when I think college coach, I think of a job that a lot of college athletes would love to have. I don't usually think oppressed blue-collar workers wearing hardhats. But they may be covered under the new DOL rules.

Looks like Bush is in fact on my side, as well of the sides of perky lacross coaches.