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Subject:Re: How not to attract staff From:Win Day <winday -at- IDIRECT -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:59:25 -0500
At 02:38 PM 2/14/97 EST, Michael Priestley wrote:
>Don Timmerman, dtimmerman -at- anl -dot- gov writes:
>>salaried employees only. What all this regularly scheduled overtime
>>boil down to is a cut in pay. If you regularly work an extra 10 hours
>>a week (without compensation), you have just taken a 25% pay cut. If
>
>Alias/Wavefront is a Canadian company. Unpaid overtime is illegal here.
>In addition, if any individual exceeds a certain amount of overtime during
>the course of the year, the company has to explain to the government why
>they haven't just hired an additional employee.
>
I have to laugh at this. Having lived and worked in Canada for almost 20
years, I've worked unpaid overtime at every company for which I've worked.
When you're hired as a salaried employee, and paid by the month, your hours
aren't tracked for overtime pay like they are for hourly employees. I much
prefer my current situation -- as an independent contractor, I am paid for
the hours I work. No overtime bonus, but no unpaid time either.
With all the corporate downsizing that's happened at large corporations, the
workload has not diminished -- only the number of bodies available to do it.
Usually this means that my husband, who works for a large oil company, gets
to work before 7 each morning and leaves around 8 each evening. And now
that he has a company-supplied laptop, he's usually still online and working
when the kids go to bed at 9 pm.
>Now, unpaid overtime still happens here, but to nowhere near the degree it does
>in the US. It happens much more at smaller companies, who can get away with
>it because the government isn't watching their every move. But even at
>smaller companies, employees do have government regulations behind them
>should they wish to challenge the issue, and wrongful dismissal regulations
>to protect them from retaliation.
>
See above. Overtime pay is only an issue for employees who are paid by the
hour.
>To give Alias/Wavefront the benefit of the doubt, they are probably paying
>very well for overtime, and simply warning applicants in advance of the
>culture they will be working in.
>
If they pay for overtime, their employees are hourly personnel, not salaried
by the month. It's a semantic point with Revenue Canada, but an important one.
Win
------------------------------
Win Day
Technical Writer/Editor
Email: winday -at- idirect -dot- com
=====================================
"I have learned that to get a job done and have
fun in it is about all you can get out of life."
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