Bosses Give Workers Bullshit ‘Manager’ Titles to Avoid Paying Overtime: Study

I guess this has been going on for a very long time. About 12 yrs ago, I worked at a place that did just this. A coworker was working long hours and had to be paid overtime so he was easily doubling his income. You could see how happy he was to get the extra money. He decided he could finally buy a home. One day it was announced that he was going to get a management job because he was so outstanding and deserved the promotion. He couldn't be happier. He was now a manager and got a pay raise. Good for him! A few weeks later he got his pay check and was fuming after he figured out that he was doing more work, working as many overtime hours and getting a lower paycheck since as a manager they didn't have to pay him overtime. He made a huge deal about it and was able to get his previous job title back. He was then told that he couldn't work overtime unless it was pre-approved by upper management. He rarely worked overtime from that point forward. He figured out how to do his job without overtime. Bottomline, the company won.

I have seen a few manager, team lead, or even director titles that don't even have subordinates.

"I'm a team lead!" Who is on your team? "Me."

I couldn't explain it, because the reason isn't overtime pay.

https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptio...

I linked to "IT Professionals" specifically, but you can fall into a lot of categories here and end up exempt from basic labour laws.

The FLSA needs a total rewrite. The fact that you can be forced to work uncompensated overtime just because you’re working with computers or your salary is above a laughably low cutoff is obscene.

The primary reason is to avoid increasing pay so you hand out titles