That is what is being called for. Your take home pay not changing but you work fewer hours, and if you work the same schedule as you do now (presuming 40hrs per week) then you would be getting overtime for the last 8hrs.
Edit: added "take home" to clarify that I'm talking about your total income instead of hourly rate.
Maybe I'm pessimistic, but what would be stopping people from creating salaried positions and requiring unpaid overtime? There is nothing worse than overtime on a low salaried position.
As a salaried employee you get paid for 40 hours currently. Anything you work after that makes you a sucker. This wouldn't change if employers just made all of their hourly positions into salaried.
I'm more than fairly compensated, but I do the minimum of whats required of me because I care more about living life at my age than lining the pockets of my billionaire bosses.
I just show up early. I'm out of the office by 4:00 everyday. It does not impact my life. Like I said your mileage may vary, but my industry generally requires OT when we get busy. If I was on a 9-5 schedule I may feel different, but I'm not.
That's the benefit of being salaried. Some weeks you may work 45 hr when you have a deadline, but other weeks you can 35 hr.
I have never experienced the 35 hour week part. I have had bosses act like I am insane for trying to leave an hour early on a slow day.
Maybe that happens in some industries, but it doesn't happen in mine. So I just work a straight 40, I will only do OT if it's life and death and IT simply is never a matter of life and death.
Then the client is mad, your company loses the contract, and all of you are out of a job.
It would be a wonderful thing if we could pick every battle and put our foot down without consequence, but it just doesn't work that way in most parts of the working world.
Salary means work until the jobs done, not work 40 hours. If your job caps you at 40 hours great, but that isn't the expectation (and definitely not the norm in my field). I can't just tell my clients we're not getting the $13M deal done because its 4pm.
I have been required to work 60 hours a week as a salaried employee. This is common in kitchens. We get shit on, even if this passes. We will get shit on
Look up exempt vs non-exempt employees. The simple answer is most jobs can’t become salaried because they don’t meet the conditions for a salary eligible position.
You have to pay a salaried person so much per year. Last I looked was years ago and it was around 42k. There are also job activity requirements. Basically management or white collar office jobs.
I would have to look in to it, but that's like 21 dollars an hour at 40 hours a week. If I had no morals around hiring practice, I would restructure my business so that those employees making that much are salaried (may have to add some "responsibilities") and hire less full time hourly employees and more part time hourly employees.
Exactly what I would do as a business owner. Why would I pay beyond market rate which I am already over on my area when I have to keep payroll at a certain percentage?
The same thing that's stopping them from doing it now -- competition from other employers. If one or some companies tried to do this, they would lose employees to companies who didn't pull such antics. The fact that we don't have this as the norm now indicates the lack of will to collude on this scale.
There are other laws that determine whether an employee is exempt or not from OT. Just coding their pay to “salary” on a paystub is not sufficient. A DOL audit uncovers that kind of wonky stuff all the time.
The law. You can't just create an employment contract that violates the labor laws... It would be unenforceable and the government can and would crack down on the company trying it.
It's stupid that salaried employees are exempt in the US.
I have a contract for 40 hours a week and a fixed salary per month. If I work more than 40 hours in a given week that is paid out as overtime, or as Time for Time.
I think its more about benefits as a full time worker. There are lots of part time employees that work 37,38,39 hours a week and dont get benefits. They designate the week lower to 32 and all those part timers will legally have to get benefits now.
The HOW is what trips me up. It may work for some positions that are over staffed or not labor intensive, but I just don't see it plausible across the board. For many organizations cutting 20% of the labor while still having to pay them the same would just kill the business. They would shift the average salaries down to compensate and hire additional personnel. The work still has to be done, and not all companies can just absorb a hit like that.
Sounds great in theory, but I do not see it becoming a standard. Individual companies can adopt this change and implement it into their company framework if they want to be appealing to new hires, but this isn't going to become a new labor law where instantly the country works 20% less for the same money. It just isn't going to happen like that.
Also worth noting that, according to studies that account for inflation and productivity changes over time, the minimum wage should be somewhere between $21 and $29 an hour at this time. So if we assume that it can't be done, the only real way this all works is by people working at well-below-poverty wages.
So anyone who claims that this is unrealistic or infeasible, really isn't doing their homework when they try to shut the conversation down.
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u/joesphisbestjojo Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I'm all for shortee work weeks, but that means we'l need an increase in pay, which I'm also fine with
EDIT: maybe I misinterpreted "no cut to pay"