Overtime Pay

I was in a conference today and I am usually good at zoning stuff out. But today was different. Near the last 15 mins of the speaker's talk, he was talking about overtime pay. From what I heard today, it is some very interesting thing that everyone should know about. Only people who are professionals and truly only manage or supervise at their jobs will not benefit from this blog. It also shows how some people just believe in what their superiors tell them for the good of the company.

So the speaker today that caught my attention name was Richard Nixon. His name was interesting I guess since it was the same as the past President of the USA, but that was not what caught my attention today. It was his topic about Overtime Class Action Lawsuit: Is your organization next? He basically summed up what is happening out there in the workforce.

So to start it off, Professionals under the Employment Standard Act says that these group of people are not entitled to overtime pay when you are working on things that are related to your profession. Sorry to all the lawyers, engineers, doctors, accountants out there, to be more specific you will have to look at the ESA. But there is an exception where if you are a lawyer who wishes to work at McDonald's and works over 44 hrs, then you are entitled to overtime pay. If you are a manager doing non managerial work that your employees do, then you are entitled to overtime pay.

Also another thing that came to my mind that was quite interesting is that, if you decide to work overtime and kept track of the hours you worked which differ from the employers. Also, if your hours were not reported to management, you are entitled to the overtime pay. I learnt that the employer must enforce the hours of work and recognize what the employees are doing.

So after 44 hrs of work you should receive overtime, but I didn't know that by law the maximum work week should not total more than 48 hrs. I know there are exceptions to all things and one of the exception is if you are required to work due to an emergency. But no one should be working more than 48hrs including the professionals.

So when I was working at my previous jobs, I notice management work an insane amount of hours, and mostly totaling more than 48hrs, and although they were managers, they were on occasion doing non managerial work, which qualifies them for overtime pay. I am sure if all these people at their work place came together and put together a class action lawsuit, the employers would lose. The speaker today, truly believe that the employees should be educated, and should not be taken advantage on. At first I strongly believe he stated this because he wanted more lawsuit cases, but he really wanted to educate more people because his daughter was taken advantage of by a reputable canadian financial institute.

Mr. Nixon made a good point that, what if the company wants to pay the overtime, and the employee is willing to work these extra hours, what is so bad about this case? So after working numerous hours, you tend to be tired and burnt out. In some professions people's lives, depend on your job, and also your safety. So one construction worker was killed on the job, and the first thing they looked at is his, work hours for the past 20 weeks, and he worked around 50-70 hrs a week monday to saturday. So I guess he has a point, and I in other industry I guess you might miss something, and might lose millions of dollars. I'm sure there are other reasons why working too much is bad.

If you are to leave your company on bad terms, or if you believe in the principal that the law exists for a reason, you should let your employer know that they should be following the labour law. Whatever you decide, I hope this blog has help opened up your eyes. And Sorry I don't have a direct link to the ESA. I encourage you to read up on the ESA or the labour act.

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