A day at the California farm where the workers will get the pay they deserve
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
What is happening soon are the new US overtime rules for salaried employees. Those take effect in two months. After December 1, 2016, anyone making less than $47,476/yr has to be paid overtime.
I support raising the minimum wage in itself, but if that goes up anymore, I simply will not hire certain positions (entry level positions, assistants, maybe even jr devs) because it doesn't make sense at 2x for their skill level and/or role.
I understand what they are trying to do, but if business owners can't make a profit in this state with rules like the 2x one, they'll move or outsource as much as possible (offshore, staffing company, etc).
They're cracking down on hiring freelancers directly so businesses should ensure that their freelancers have a registered company (LLC) or be an "employee" at a staffing company.
You can still pay them hourly for 40 hours or more, you are just subject to wage and hour rules (including premium overtime.) You keep acting like this is a minimum pay for full-time employees in certain jobs, when it is, in fact, a minimum monthly salary to qualify for certain exemptions from wage and hour rules.
At the very least - there's extra admin overhead and rules from not having them exempt (paying less than the minimum) which should be weighed against the exemptions you get from paying the minimum salary amounts for certain jobs. For my company, I think we'll move toward lower but fair salaries and less hours and pay any overtime needed at times for some roles.
I bet there's a lot of companies paying under the $~87k for computer related professionals that do not pay overtime.
While the limit was lower about 7 yrs ago when I was working for the man (an agency), I definitely didn't get overtime for many long weeks and I was not exempt at the time.
Yes - for the parent's law you could not have them work overtime.
If your business can't survive without a ton (if it's only a little here and there, then this shouldn't be much of a hardship?) of unpaid overtime from low-paid employees (less than $20/hr), then that sounds like an issue with your business.
Overtime spikes won't be a big deal because all of our employees (any skill-level) rarely go over 40 hours each week. If they do at times, it's not by much.
For many positions I think 32 hours / week is better anyway and if there's overtime then it won't matter much at all, because we're not paying over the minimum to get exemptions and then trying to extract 50-60+ hours per week from our employees like many firms do.
Yes, you can. If you hire them for less than that, they just aren't exempt from state wage, hour, etc. rules, so you have to pay them overtime, etc.
It is not a minimum pay for full-time employees, it is a minimum salary threshold for employees that otherwise qualify for either the professional, executive, or administrative exemption to wage and hour laws.
Its basically the same as the other law, except the other law covers federal wage and hour rules, and the California law covers California wage and hour rules.
More detail in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592278
Raising the minimum wage is pretty scary when taking a look at the trends of telecommuting (a decade of experience with this and counting, global broadband, better hardware, software, continuing to get better), mechanical automation, and software automation (which one might say AI but includes a lot more.) A lot of employees are already on the cusp of being non competitive. Instead of incentivizing a calm transition policy we are incentivizing a rapid expansion of automation.
Creating a bunch of additional layers of policy to force employers to hire humans and pay them a lot misses the point. The answer is to make sure it is cheaper, easier, and more sustainable to meet both basic & advanced human needs rather than try to focus on inflating prices until some sort of magic prosperity emerges (besides the magic of urban land owners making a great return on their investments.)
Automation replaces people, it happens. We just ensure owners of the automation don't solely reap the benefits.
The magic prosperity you speak of is already here; there is no need for a 40 hour work week with the productivity gains occurring since the 70s. There simply hasn't been an organized effort to reduce the work week to 3-4 work days, yet.
Other states don't have these rules and competition in many industries is across states or globally.
And nothing in the actual law prevents you from paying $41.6k or less (the whole way down to the minimum wage) for 40 hours of work. What you can't do is pay $41.6k or less and then not pay overtime. (And the threshold is much higher if you rely on the computer-related work exemption, and you have to pay overtime regardless of base pay if the work doesn't qualify for some exemption -- unlike the Feds which do at $100k [rising to $134k], California doesn't have an unqualified "high-pay" exemption.)
Depending on the job, it can be. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about doing that, and not paying overtime.
At a minimum, regulation should match social expectation such as the minimum wage is enough that it shields businesses from such concerns as "am I paying people enough to survive?"
If your business can't pay more simply because the service isn't worth more then that isn't greed.
If your business can't pay more, because the money is earmarked for other things, then that isn't greed.
Basically, shuffling around monies between third parties isn't greed. It's only greed when the money is kept to yourself when others could use it, and could make a reasonable claim to deserving it (e.g. not being charitable is not greed).
The new federal minimum requirement that goes into effect Dec. 1 (for those in the special job-duties related exemptions; there's a higher one for pay alone) is $47,476/yr, anyway.
The California minimum for a salaried exempt employee under the exemption for computer-related professions is $87,185.14. [0]
The 2×minimum wage rule applies to professional [1], administrative [2], and executive [3] employees who have over 50% of their time in highly-responsible work of types defined in the law. It doesn't seem likely to apply to the entry level, and jr. dev positions you are talking about (and not "assistants", either, except for executive assistants to whom some portion of discretionary authority from the executive is delegated.)
And, in either the federal or state case, if they are paid less than that amount, they are not exempt from wage and hour (e.g., overtime) rules.
> I support raising the minimum wage in itself, but if that goes up anymore, I simply will not hire certain positions (entry level positions, assistants, maybe even jr devs) because it doesn't make sense at 2x for their skill level and/or role.
I don't understand this. Other than the fact that basically none of the positions you identify are likely to be covered by the double minimum wage threshold that you are complaining about (devs for sure would be covered by the much higher computer-related threshold, and generic entry level employees and assistants aren't likely to qualify under any exemption in the first place, regardless of salary), even if they were you absolutely can hire them for lower salaries, they just aren't exempt from wage and hour laws (e.g., overtime requirements, etc.) if you do. You seem to fail to understand either the applicability or the meaning of California's law here.
[0] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf
[1] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=P#profession...
[2] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=A#administra...
[3] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=E#executive%...
To color up my comment: I have been hiring Jr. Devs that have little or no experience and are doing career changes. They don't have computer science backgrounds, usually just some bootcamps and personal learning.
We also have entry level / jr project coordinators working on tech projects and other admins and exec assistants which seem like they could fall under the administrative rules.
So basically we can hire them for less than the 2x salary rule but we have to manage overtime and be subject to other rules.
Appreciate the links.
There's a lot of grey area in job classifications, and companies will run with it if you give them the chance. They have to, in fact, because the competition will.
Not to interject politics into it, but during the debate last night one of the candidates said that they wanted to raise the minimum wage (to 15 an hour I believe), while simultaneously adding more good paying jobs to the economy.
Those are fundamentally opposite goals - at least, the government isn't going to be able to do it in any meaningful way.
With a 15 dollar minimum wage, fast food restaurants are rolling out kiosk technology, that allows you to order without an employee present. Even Applebee's and TGI Friday's is experimenting with software + an iPad to allow you to order directly from your table.
Those jobs aren't coming back. Not ever. Kiosks don't complain, they don't screw up orders, they don't have sick days, and they work for free. Once the initial capital investment is over, it's pure profit, and for those who say that you can have more jobs repairing and servicing the kiosks, I say that if the price to repair and service kiosks goes higher than the wage for employees, the kiosks will go the way of the dodo.
Take a look at Eatsa. http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/08/31/fast-food-re....
They have 5-6 back of the house employees. The cashier jobs are not coming back.
Right, but I have to wonder if those who want to keep minimum wage down really care about keeping jobs for all these people. Surely they'd celebrate the impending automation of these jobs, where they only need to worry about purchasing equipment rather than the well-being of squishy meat-bags known as employees? I just find it hard to believe it's for altruistic reasons that they want wages kept low, considering they'd sooner have a machine or third party make their tortillas, grind their coffee, bake their bread etc. than have staff do it in-house like someone who actually cared about jobs or even quality.
The people who will buy food from the vending machine type services: The people at the bottom. And competing businesses will find ways of making food and services cheaper and cheaper as technology improves. The people earning respectable amounts of money for their time and effort, they're going to be eating at places served by other people. You've merely shifted those at the bottom one step forward in the food chain.
The proof? Look at countries like Australia where the minimum wage is already respectable and you'll find low unemployment and a lot of people working in hospitality or similar services.
They don't care, but the restaurant business is precarious. They know that hiring people for minimum wage works, and keeps their margins the way they are. However, investing is kiosks and hardware is something they'd have to amortize over time.
An increase in minimum wage might tip them over - the risk of the machines not working and constantly requiring expensive repairs might be outweighed by the fact you don't have to pay extra money to your employees.
> The people earning respectable amounts of money for their time and effort, they're going to be eating at places served by other people.
Just a personal anecodote, I'm fairly antisocial. I'd rather line up in a self service lane or self checkout line in a grocery or fast food place than deal with another person. And I doubt I qualify as a person "at the bottom".
People in the US look at things in a vacuum, however a good portion of the rest of the world, chiefly Western Europe, Australia and Canada make high minimum wage, good food and service work.
> Just a personal anecodote, I'm fairly antisocial.
Then I'm in good company. If you've ever been to the big cities in Japan you'll notice that you can buy cheap delicious ramen ordered from a ticket machine and served to you through a curtain in your booth so that you never see another person's face, but you'll also notice lines out the door for mid and high-end restaurants. Cheapness and ease of access has nothing to do with desire.
I guess that I don't understand the concept of desire. To me, there is no additional benefit for having people serve me, except that the food might be better. I'd be just as happy getting a sandwich from an automat as from a person serving it on a china plate.
Simply put, what value do we get from human interaction in a dining setting?
Sorry if there's a running theme here - using Japan as an example where automation, pre-made foods and very hands-on service are all widely available: automated services mean that whatever ingredients you're using need to be consistent in flavor, size, shape etc. Humans have greater capacity to adapt with what resources they have. Pre-made foods are relatively bland as a result of this. It's like the difference between McDonalds, which has very tight processes and a largely inflexible menu, versus a gourmet burger joint which might be using a different cheese, grade of bun, larger patties, more or less condiments from one day to another.
Another example would be micro-brewed beers versus macro-brewed beers. Micro-brewed beers tend to be more exotic in their flavors and styles while sacrificing consistency, whereas macro-brewed beers tend to be very consistent in taste at the expense of flavor.
Judging from your personal preferences this probably means little to you but, usually for hedonistic reasons, it's important to most other people. The above also ignores peoples needs for social contact, desire to appear more wealthy or sophisticated than they really are etc. It's illogical but humans use these aspects as breeding tools and to trigger dopamine release. Sex and drugs.
I think chefs aren't going anywhere for a while. They're in charge of too many things, from sourcing food, preparing and coming up with new dishes, balancing the seasoning for every dish, etc etc. Appearances to the contrary, I really do like eating good food and I have fairly high standards when it comes to food, and I appreciate what chefs have to do to make the most out of nothing. ("Beef tongue is only 1.50 a pound! Guess what's on special tonight")
The benefit I'm not seeing is having a human being (be it a fast food worker, or a waiter) take your order. That's the part I don't get. I would love to order through a touch screen and just have the food come out. Unless you're a sommelier, you really don't add any value to the dining experience, unless the customer likes bossing people around.
All you have to get is that people enjoy ceremony, feeling special, appearing above their station or other individuals due to biological underpinnings. Logical people like yourself are above that silliness, most people aren't and I don't see a renaissance on the way for objective thinking. I'd argue it's going the other way.
Edit: this sort of comes back to economic policy relying on rational choice theory or the rational actor, when we know it completely ignores the reality of how people make decisions. Several threads on HN have discussed how economic policy needs to move away from rational choice theory and adopt psychological models to predict behavior. Humans aren't logical.
While sorta funny that they are and programmers aren't, in all practicality it will mostly mean a few more will be hired, and that it will be more difficult to get more than 8 hours a day.
This is similar to how state-mandated benefits for workers working a certain number of hours just led to managers at places like Walmart cutting shifts so that workers work just under the threshold. The net result is that workers are often worse off since they don't make as much as they did before and they don't get the benefits.
It's not clear to me, of course, why anybody who gets neither overtime nor equity would want longer than 8 hour shifts. Maybe because making other people richer is so much fun?
Now that there will be a higher overtime rate, it can, in some cases make sense for businesses to hire more employees rather than to pay existing employees to work overtime. For employees who choose to work overtime, that's bad news.
If your job options are limited (few readers on HN know what this feels like) then any paid hours are better than none. A 10 hour shift means 10 hours of money. Now it will be 11 hours of money. Except your shift will be cut to 7h.
If someone makes $10/hour and they work 8 hours, they make $80.
If they work 10 hours at $10/hour here is the difference between overtime and not overtime:
With Overtime - $10/hour X 8 hours + $10/hour X 1.5 (overtime pay) X 2 hours = $110
Without Overtime - $10/hour X 8 hours + $10/hour X1.0 (reg pay) X 2 hours = $100
The worker still gets paid for 10 hours, but because the first worker gets overtime, they make an extra $10. The reason overtime exists is to prevent managers from requiring workers to work 16 hour days etc.
Were you never a teenager? In fact these laws have made it prohibitive to higher local teen agers. Eventually, the trouble of hiring will overcome the initial capital outlay for robots (which can now even do berry picking). You are going to chase people out of work.
Learn about the subjects you are discussing (farming and economics) before coming to wild conclusions.
I remember one IT position where we did 4x10, that was awesome for free time (long weekends) and pushed us around normal commute windows
And another thing to consider: If you're negotiating your salary, you program in your lowest desired hourly rate. If you don't want to make less than $50/hour, and you expect many weeks at 50 hours/week instead of 40, set your pay to be > $2500/week. We're (in tech) often in a greater position to negotiate our salaries and benefits, we should exercise this.