IT Overtime California - Companies Make Money Off Employee Overtime

Los Angeles, CACalifornia is home to a large number of technology companies; however many Information Technology (IT) workers do not actually know their rights when it comes to overtime pay. Knowing their rights, especially relating to overtime, is vital because IT jobs often require overtime work, responding to technology emergencies and performing computer upgrades during the company's downtime or working extra hours in order to get projects done on time.

By doing their jobs, these IT specialists often either make money for their companies or at least save their companies money by fixing problems, yet they receive no overtime compensation for all their work.

A major problem for IT workers is their classification within a company. In some cases, IT workers are classified as management and therefore exempt from overtime pay, even if most of the time they are not actually performing management work. In other cases, the workers are hired as "independent contractors," but they are hired to work for only one company. "Independent contractors" are generally not given overtime pay because they work for a number of companies and have their own business license. However, people who are hired to work for a company and are then classified by that company as "independent contractors" are a different matter. The company usually regards the "independent contractor" as being exempt from overtime pay but in fact that person is non-exempt, meaning that he or she should be given overtime pay.

Overtime pay legislation differs from state to state as well as federally. Federal labor laws calculate overtime pay weekly, meaning people who work over 40 hours per week are eligible for overtime pay. In California overtime pay is done daily, meaning that those who work more than eight hours in a day are eligible for overtime compensation.

Not properly classifying employees can cost companies a lot of money. Late last year a settlement was announced in the class-action lawsuit Rosenburg et al. v. IBM in which current and former employees of IBM claimed that it violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The plaintiffs also claimed that the company violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), state wage laws in numerous states by misclassifying employees so that they did not receive overtime pay, and state laws governing meal breaks. The lawsuit was filed to compensate employees for unpaid overtime wages and credit for those wages under IBM's pension and savings plans.

Employee positions with IBM, who were part of the class-action lawsuit, include Technical Services Professionals and IT Specialists. They included those who worked in California, Kentucky, New York and various other states.

IBM agreed to settle the case. The settlement will see IBM pay $65 million, which will be dispersed among the employees who chose to be included in the class-action suit. The actual amount given to each class member will depend on factors including salary, position code, job band, and date and states of employment.

IBM is not the only company to reach settlements regarding overtime pay for its workers. Electronic Arts and Computer Sciences Corp. have also been sued for failing to pay workers for overtime hours. As part of its settlement, Electronic Arts agreed to review the classification of software engineers and reclassify them as non-exempt for overtime where applicable.

As an example of what some IT professionals and computer programmers deal with at work, the then-fiancé of an employee at Electronic Arts posted a blog explaining what her significant other dealt with in terms of long hours. According to her blog, her fiancé started off working eight hours a day, six days a week in order to get a project done on time. She writes that this continued for months and months until his hours went up, to working from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM six days a week. This also continued for a while until the hours again went up, from six days a week to seven days a week.

For working those long hours, the Electronic Arts salaried employees received no overtime and no compensation time (additional time off for working overtime). This is what many computer specialists deal with on an all too common basis. They are pushed by companies to their limits and not properly compensated for all the time they give to their employers. Meanwhile, the company often makes money off of all the extra work of its employees.

If you work in information technology, one of the best things you can do is figure out your status with your employer, that is what your job designation is, and then determine whether or not you are being paid properly. If you believe you are not being properly paid for overtime work, speak to a lawyer to discuss your options.