Never Mind Overtime Pay: Too Much Work Can Kill You

Irvine, CAA scientific study done in California a few years ago concluded that working long hours can raise hypertension risk by 29 percent. In other words, working long hours can be bad for your health. That's one of the reasons why overtime laws exist, to ensure that workers who work more hours than the standard work week receive overtime pay according to an overtime pay rule observed by most States and the federal government.

But there are ways around it. And it doesn't help when tech companies are aided and abetted by State government when laws are passed exempting employers from the need to pay overtime. That's what happened in California, after laws were passed exempting high-tech companies from having to pay overtime to any employee making at least $75,000 a year, or $36 each hour. That law was just clarified by way of a further breakout of the figures: a gross salary of at least $6,250 per month, or one-twelfth of the annual stipend of $75,000, is exempt from overtime.

Proponents of such legislation would make the case that California has such a high percentage of high-tech companies, with highly-skilled and highly-paid tech workers and computer professionals, that some kind of overtime cap was necessary to help companies stay competitive. Others argued that it was necessary to keep employers honest, as so many were flaunting the overtime rules by purposely mis-classifying employees in an effort to avoid paying them overtime. Indeed, the time-and-a-half rate for someone making $75,000 per year would be extremely expensive.

However, critics argue that there are ways around that. Assuming, for example, that your best people are up around the $75,000 range, you don't want to be taxing those people unduly. Tired workers, regardless of their responsibility and pay level, make mistakes.

Additionally, the possibility of a huge overtime hit with highly-paid workers would motivate most employers to move that overtime down the salary scale to workers making less. These workers, many of them junior and struggling, would welcome the overtime pay. A senior employee could consult with a junior-level employee on a project which requires overtime, but serve only in a supervisory role, at fewer hours. The junior employee would not only benefit from the additional work and the additional pay, he or she could benefit from the additional training as well. Everybody wins.

But not in the current scenario. Now, employers in California have the ability to tax their senior employees to the limit. There is no longer anything stopping them from piling the work onto someone making $75,000 per year. One can only wonder that a recently purchased version of software with a huge bug in it, acquired that bug because some poor tech guy somewhere was being pushed to the limit to get this done on deadline, and was simply tired.

This can lead to health problems. 'Work Hours and Self-Reported Hypertension Among Working People in California,' is the paper by Haiou Yang; Peter L. Schnall; Maritza Jauregui; Ta-Chen Su; and Dean Baker, and published in 'Hypertension' in 2006. The University of California study found that incidence of high blood pressure was found to be 29 percent higher in most individuals working a 51-hour week, than someone working a relatively-standard 39-hour week. Ironically, the only exceptions to this were those individuals involved in extremely challenging and mentally stimulating jobs. The latter tended to protect the individual from the effects of hypertension (high blood pressure).

However, while hypertension does, indeed lie at the root of many health problems, there can be others. Lack of sleep, exercise and family time can create all sorts of problems. And the stress associated with poor job performance due to increased errors due to overwork just adds to the crisis. It can be an endless loop.

Employers view overtime as a fact of business life—and most would much rather be required to pay overtime, than keep additional personnel on the full-time payroll needlessly, during slower periods. Many manufacturers build scheduled overtime into their budgets in an effort to meet expected surges in product demand (a result of just-in-time manufacturing). And of course, hospitals incur huge overtime costs due to the shortage of nurses, and need that is driven by the health cycles of their catchment areas.

But by and large, employers hate overtime because you can't predict it. Sure, you can budget for it. But will you budget too much, or too little in one year? Budget too much, and you've robbed some other department of precious dollars it might have needed. Budget too little, and your costs suddenly rise. That can hurt your profit margin, and tick off your shareholders.

However, the health care industry aside some suggest that erratic overtime is a sign of poor management, and that doesn't give employers the right to carry poor management practices on the backs of their employees—many of whom are already tired from working challenging jobs even before the requirement of overtime kicks in. That includes tech workers in California making more than $75,000 a year. When the extra work comes their way, they won't see a dime for it.

And come their way it will, as employers no longer have the need to pay for it.

It should be noted that the United States remains the only developed country that does not have legal restrictions on the number of hours a person can work each week, and laws such as those passed in the State of California are not helping. Little wonder that workers are pursuing legal action to reclaim overtime pay previously denied, according to the overtime pay rule and provisions in existing overtime laws that appear to be shifting in favor of the employer.

In Japan, where workers toil far fewer hours than Americans do, they have this word. Maybe you're heard it: karoshi…

It means dying suddenly, from working too much.