Overtime

“ At present it is commonly the case that in order to obtain an adequate wage the worker works overtime, and presses to have overtime work, because the rate of pay for overtime is higher, and that during the normal hours of work he does less. ”

“ That means if you take off a Friday that you have earned by working overtime your employer could simply make you work Saturday without paying overtime because you haven't worked your full 40-hour week. ”

“ All overtime work done by a wage earner, as well as the remuneration received by him for the same, must be recorded in his labor booklet.
101. The total number of days on which overtime may be permitted in any enterprise, establishment or institution must not exceed 50 days per annum, including such days when only one wage earner worked overtime.
102. Every enterprise, establishment or institution must keep a special record book for overtime work.
103. All wage earners must be allowed a weekly uninterrupted rest of not less than 42 hours. ”

“ The employee willing, the number of hours which must be worked to earn the guaranty can be increased by suitable adjustment of the contract figures of hourly rate, hours contracted and overtime percentages. By such a verbal device, astute management may avoid many of the disadvantages of ordinary overtime, chief of which is a definite increase in the cost of labor as soon as the hours worked exceed the statutory workweek. ”

“ A few chargemen in every shed systematically nurse the overseer and entreat, or influence him, directly or otherwise, to allow them to work a few quarters, a Saturday afternoon, or a Sunday.
Very often, too, some of the men live in houses owned by their foreman. In that case a little overtime will expedite payment of the rent; it will not then be amiss to allow them to work a few quarters. The putting on a few new hands and the addition of a night shift would obviate much overtime and give the unemployed a chance, but the daymen are offended should that proposition be made. ”

“ There seems to be an almost unanimous opinion against overtime, and any mention of factory legislation appears to suggest overtime at once to both employers and employed. Experience has driven it home to them that overtime is a most uneconomical method of work; [70] and as there does not appear to be any demand for women's labour at night except occasionally as overtime, the factory law in this respect is only a protection to the employée engaged by the employer who is still experimenting with this unproductive use of labour. ”

“ Things like the forty-hour workweek and overtime are two of the most basic pillars of a middle class life. But for all the changes we’ve seen in our economy, our overtime rules have only been updated once since the 1970s. Just once. In fact, forty years ago, more than 60 percent of workers were eligible for overtime based on their salaries. ”

“ Among the younger women—the girls who have had no experience of conditions before 1867, the opinion about overtime is not so unanimous. Some few like what little overtime is allowed to them and say they would not mind more. One such worker was met, just arrived home from her factory late one Saturday afternoon. She had been working overtime as a consequence of the Queen's death—the envelope makers and black borderers were all working late just then. ”

“ Even where a longshoreman worked precisely forty hours of 'straight time,' followed by a few hours of 'overtime' in the same week, payment of the appropriate wages as determined by the collectibe agreement would not satisfy the Court's test that only such extra pay as is given 'for work because of previous work for a specified number of hours in the workday or workweek' [11] can be regarded as true overtime pay. To require specification in an industry where the only thing certain is uncertainty is to command the impossible. ”

“ We,” it goes on to say, “would ask if the practice of working overtime by a number of hands, is likely to create a good feeling between masters and servants. Those who are worked overtime feel the injustice equally with those who are condemned to forced idleness. There is in the district almost sufficient work to give to all partial employment if fairly distributed. ”

“ Each man works many hours overtime each month with no expectation of compensation. The records show that the agents average approximately 120 hours of overtime each month in excess of the overtime required of them and for which they are paid. Often the men find themselves working overtime knowing that their extra effort will be rewarded with pay averaging 19 cents an hour. ”

“ They may be accepted, however, as substantially establishing the fact that overtime does not in general counterbalance short time and slackness, and that in the foregoing review of earnings on the basis of a full-time week we have been dealing with figures which are distinctly rosier than the facts warrant. ”

“ He could hardly have intended in § 69 to employ the statutory maximum hours as synonymous with regular working hours as there is no prohibition on regular working hours that are longer than the statutory maximum. His illustrations, numbers 2 and 3, show that overtime premiums may be earned within the first 40 hours of a workweek. The statutory maximum hours are significant only as requiring overtime premium pay. An employer may increase pay or decrease hours free as to those steps from statutory regulation. ”

“ And the men in my department say it's got to be settled right now. That wage scale says we get time and a half for overtime, and the men in the finishing department, they ain't gettin' no time and a half on piecework and we never understood that agreement you claim we signed with you anyhow. So what we says, if we don't get double time instead of time and a half for overtime—why, Mr. Gibson, it looks like them men couldn't hardly be held back. ”

“ It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the terrific nature of the hardships endured, the majority of the men at the factory do not show themselves seriously averse to the working of overtime. There is even satisfaction evinced at the prospect of putting in an extra day, or day and a half, a week, and drawing a few shillings more in wages. ”

“ It is interesting to note that one employer reported that the addition of two hours' overtime to a 9-hour day for three days a week caused excessive fatigue after a few months, so that the overtime was stopped, but after a month the pressure of work was so great that they had to return to it, and now they find that this excessive fatigue is avoided, or, rather, fatigue so extreme as to diminish output is avoided by working every fourth week without overtime. ”

“ No overtime shall be permitted on Saturday nor on any day for more than two and a half hours, nor before 8 A.M. or after 8 P.M. For overtime work the employees shall receive double the usual pay. No contracting or subcontracting shall be permitted by the firm inside its factory, and no operator or finisher shall be permitted more than one helper.
XIII. No work shall be given employees to be done at their homes.
XV. Only members of respective locals above named shall be employed by the firm to do the said work.
[27] Mr. London for the cloak makers, and Mr. Cohen for the manufacturers. ”

“ However, the pressure of the contract overtime wages is not solely toward a spread of employment. Since work is in fact done outside straight time hours, the employer can use men who have previously worked in straight time hours in contract overtime hours without additional cost. ”

“ The successes accordingly did much to create, in the industries in question, a preference for combination and collective bargaining as a means of improving the conditions of labour. The prevalence of systematic overtime, which has since proved so formidable a deduction from the advantages gained by the Nine Hours Movement, was either overlooked by sanguine officials, or covertly welcomed by individual workmen as affording opportunities for working at a higher rate of remuneration. ”

“ Overtime may be permitted by inspectors on twenty-eight days a year, but overtime pay must be not less than 6d. an hour extra. The factory-owners who send work out have to make complete returns thereof. ”

“ No problem is presented in assimilating the computation of overtime for employees under contract for a fixed weekly wage for regular contract hours which are the actual hours worked, [16] to similar computations for employees on hourly rates. Where the employment contract is for a weekly wage with variable or fluctuating hours the same method of computation produces the regular rate for each week. ”

“ XI. When owing to special circumstances it becomes necessary to increase the working hours, there shall be paid as wages for the overtime one hundred per cent more than those fixed for regular time. In no case shall the overtime exceed three hours nor continue for more than three consecutive days; and no women of whatever age nor boys under sixteen years of age may engage in overtime work. ”

“ In the emergency, overtime orders, good for one month each, were granted individual firms who requested them on account of war demands. These orders usually permitted women to work either in eight hour or twelve hour shifts during any part of the twenty-four hours, or, as an alternative to the shift system, two hours of overtime daily on each of five days were allowed, making a seventy hour week. ”

“ Three systems of hours were found in operation in munition plants. There was the single shift of thirteen-fourteen hours including meal times, which was known as the “overtime system,” two twelve hour and three eight hour shifts. The committee considered that in the long run the latter yielded the best results with women workers. [Pg 137]
The committee recommend the adoption of the three shifts system without overtime, wherever a sufficient supply of labor is available. ”

“ Here the extra wage is the industry's overtime rate for work which might not be within the overtime period of the Fair Labor Standards Act, but was within the schedule of the collective agreement for extra wages, not because the work was overtime in the ordinary industrial sense but because it was at periods during which all work was sought to be discouraged by making it costly. Because the union secured for its men an extra wage even for not more than forty working hours, the scope of the Fair Labor Standards Act as to overtime is not enlarged. ”

“ The statute covers also those who work outside the statutory normal hours. Logically, if Sundays and holidays were not to receive extra compensation, without regard to whether services on those days were overtime, there would have been no occasion to add Sundays and holidays to the overtime. Overtime would cover every situation. ”

“ Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no drunkenness, and that at a time when the average earnings of many classes of workmen are two or three times above the normal level. The methods introduced in the twenty years before the war—conference and discussion—have practically settled all difficulties between employers and employed, in these parts at any rate, during this time of England's trial."
After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures of a new shell factory they are just putting up. ”

“ The adoption of a maximum working-day in Switzerland has put a stop to the practice on the part of manufacturers of taking away their competitor’s orders and executing them by means of overtime work, so that amongst industrial managers also, the tide is beginning to turn against too frequent indulgence in overtime work. ”

“ Even the overtime, the one means by which they could set up a barrier between themselves and actual want, which, indeed, they were forced to accept to preserve their respectability, was badly paid for and unjustly distributed. Owing to the constant fluctuation in the amount of work, the telegraphists were frequently required to perform overtime at a minute’s notice at almost all hours of the day and night. ”

“ Men who worked contract overtime hours were entitled to contract overtime pay. They were given no overtime premium pay because of long hours. It is immaterial that his regular rate may greatly exceed the statutory minimum rate. This contract overtime rate, therefore, did not meet the excess pay requirements of § 7. ”

“ He will perform the allotted task, but extra pay is no inducement for him to work overtime. The only consideration that will move him to do extra work is the promise that the overtime will be credited on another day in order to give him an extra holiday. ”

“ Smith, the managing partner of a Manchester factory: "We (he means his "hands" who work for "us") work on, with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 101/2 hours is finished by 4.30. p.m., and all after that is overtime." [40] (Does this Mr. Smith take no meals himself during 101/2 hours ?) "We (this same Smith) seldom leave off working before 6 p.m. (he means leave off the consumption of 'our' labour-power machines) , so that we (iterum Crispinus) are really working overtime the whole year round .... ”

“ Long hours may impede the free interstate flow of commodities by creating friction between production areas with different length workweeks, by offering opportunities for unfair competition through undue extension of hours, and by inducing labor discontent apt to lead to interference with commerce through interruption of work. Overtime pay probably will not solve all problems of overtime work, but Congress may properly use it to lessen the irritations. ”

“ From the 4th of November the rate of hourly wages for time work was raised to 6d., with 8d. overtime; contract work was converted into piece-work, with a minimum rate of 6d., and other points in dispute were settled. Though during the strike cases of intimidation and violence on the part of pickets were by no means absent, the police-court charges arising out of the dispute were remarkably few. ”