[cinives]

Welcome to deflation and the global economy, folks.

Nice: work 45 hours for the same pay as 40 hours used to supply.

[Old Professer]

Well, let’s say they are paid $1.00/hr now, they get cur 15% and it drops to $0.85/hr; $40.00/wk vs $34.00 wk after cut; they work 5 hours @ $1.50/hr plus the 40 hours and the gross is $40.375; the new scale actually gives them 1.009 of their old pay.

But they worked an extra five hours for the privilege.

[Red in Blue PA]

Are the CEO and the VP’s going to see a cut?

If not, why not?

[CJ Wolf]

And the dollar is worth less.

[HIDEK6]

Nice: work 45 hours for the same pay as 40 hours used to supply.

I think the point was that these workers were having to work 45 hours anyway and were not eligible for overtime pay.

Usually workers stick it to The Man more than The Man sticks it to the workers.

[MarkL]

Nice: work 45 hours for the same pay as 40 hours used to supply.

This is a serious misinterpretation to what this article is all about.

The problem is that in IT, it's pretty rare to work a 40 hour week. That's why MOST IT workers are on salary. So the IBM employees were payed more than they'll get now that they've been reclassified as hourly pay employees. Their base pay for 40 hours of work will be less, but they would make the same as they were when they were on salary, based on "time and a half" overtime pay. But they're going to cut back on the number of overtime hours that these people work to cut labor costs. So they'll be earning less because they'll be working fewer hours.

I'm not defending the action of IBM. I just wanted to correct your interpretation of the article.

Mark

[dan1123]

Nice: work 45 hours for the same pay as 40 hours used to supply.

I don't think this is how things will work out in the long run. These workers may temporarily lose 15% pay, but wages will rebalance. What is gained here is a good feedback mechanism. If a company finds itself paying more in overtime than it would take to hire another employee, then they can hire the new employee rather than be generally oblivious to the problem except for generic reports of "poor morale" that gets "solved" with minor perks and motivational posters.