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Comment by ivoras | Hacker News Reader

Uhmh, can anyone elaborate on exactly why someone driving perishable food should be exempt from overtime pay? Isn't it a bit ass-backwards: exactly those who need to work overtime so the food doesn't spoil are the ones who cannot get overtime? Am I reading that correctly?

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You're reading it correctly and it's working as intended. The people who should have reasonably expected that their job involves overtime are the ones who shouldn't be able to demand punitive extra pay when it turns out that their job involves overtime.

Maybe it sounds more palatable said the other way round: the people whose job can't reasonably be expected to involve overtime are the ones who most need statutory protection when they're suddenly asked to work overtime (because they didn't plan for it when negotiating their contract, for example).

The point of overtime pay is to incentivise employers to employ extra workers instead of overworking the ones they already have into the grave. It doesn't matter whether it is expected or not, unless the job intrinsically requires overtime and cannot be done by hiring extra workers. So exceptions for trucking, perhaps, but exceptions for "packing for shipment" are definitely total bullshit!

Not always. Sometimes it's about safety (you don't want employees having to drive too many hours).

If you are an IT worker you're probably exempt from overtime pay as well. Does nobody bat an eye at this? How is this even justified?

Because IT workers make a lot more money than the average voter so they are more likely to be the victim of animosity than the subject of pity.

Classic divide and conquer. Nobody will vote for worker protection laws because the law might also benefit someone who makes a different amount of money than them or someone otherwise from a different tribe.

Look at the comment in this thread declaring that you’re unreasonable to expect overtime compensation if you should “expect” overtime because of the nature of the work. That’s not a fringe opinion.

We live in an era where the rights of workers and individuals is held in contempt by those in business and government. If you aren’t wealthy, you’re defective.

We live in an era where the rights of workers is held in contempt by workers. Everybody wants to drag everyone else down.

There is wisdom here, and it takes courage and empathy to focus on building people up.

As a tech lead, I have made it my sacred duty to build people up rather than exploit them as 'resources'.

Personally the reason I don't complain about not getting overtime pay is because just as often as I'm working 12 hour days, I'm sitting at work playing games on my phone. Working in a more operational side of the IT spectrum, unless I have a major project I'm working on, my job is dependent on there actually being work to do.

Might not be the typical case for IT workers, but if I started complaining about overtime pay and wanting to get paid for hours I'm actually working, I might just find myself taking a pay cut.

If you had said for as often as your working 12 hour days you're spending time away from the office, you might actually convince someone. But sitting at work playing games on your phone is not really a job perk that most people would trade for.

I'm lucky that at my current job, despite legally being exempt, we actually get overtime. If I want to work more hours one night and go in late the next day I will do that. But if the company needs me to work after hours or on weekends, then they should pay overtime.

Because you're not an hourly worker. Your job doesn't involve punching in a time clock, so there is no such thing as overtime.

The flip side of this is there's no such thing as undertime either. If you go home early one day, you still get paid for the full day.

I can see the law is there to protect property owners from being fleeced by the working class come harvest time, what's wrong with that? Maybe you don't own enough farmland to be able to relate to those who need to make lots of money from the misery of others, whether bovine or human!

But here is a thing -

Right now I am eating a dairy snack item that someone drove in a massive lorry across the Alps with, risking life and limb, climate changing the ozone hole in the process.

Theoretically this truck loaded with useful quantities of yoghurt laced with sugar could have been slowed down by ice, floods and immigrants on the road - anything could have happened.

You would think that it might be possible to buy a locally made dairy item. Cows used to be personally owned, as common as cars and really useful for pulling ploughs primarily. Then horses stepped up to the plough pulling and cows became relegated to dairy herds, no longer man's best 'prime mover' and not personally owned. There has been a lot of consolidation since, hence the food miles.

The dairy in town closed down a long time ago, the farmers now do other things with their fields and even the big dairy they built on a factory scale is closed as that was not competitive in the marketplace. The subsidies have gone and now the food miles are not really anything anyone cares about. However we do have massive lorries towing useful things like yoghurt and even water over the Alps.

I know that lorry drivers in Europe have some tachometer that does not lie. They therefore cannot rack up the overtime extensively. There is a limit to how many hours they can be physically at the wheel or else they would be breaking the law.

In dairy you do have weather related yield changes, so if it is really dry and the cows have nothing to eat then there is not the same supply as when everything is lush and green. There are also supply changes, demand can go silly at Christmas. I appreciate that in 1956 or whenever it was necessary to get 'farm hands' to pull their weight when nature demanded it but we have moved in to a sillier world and I bet those Maine drivers aren't doing local runs but taking product many miles across many 'Alps' in a supply chain that has over-evolved for yester-laws.

Now I want a cow, thanks.

Seriously, I can't help but wonder if we have made some comically bad mistakes in letting food become so centralized.

Before getting a dairy animal, consider: do I want to spend 30 minutes every single morning and every single evening, regardless of weather, vacation time, desire to travel, or illness, to get 1-2 gallons of milk per day?

Small-scale dairy requires a huge commitment of time at regular, consistent times. It is about as far from a casual hobby as you can get.

(Source: my wife wanted a dairy goat. We no longer have goats.)

So, my solution to that is to hire staff via Schedule H.

Minimum wage makes that expensive milk (though probably less expensive than doing it yourself!)

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