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).
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.