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Bullockist wrote:
I was surprised that people in the US had no idea aboutr penalty rate- especially you nkelsch :/

Penalty rates are just renumeration for working gak time. It all comes off the 5 day week so all businesses are trying to kill it. Work saturday 1.25% work sunday 1.75% and so on, depending on how good your union is. I've worked a lot of time in hospitality and penalty rates should be mandatory, the life you give up to get gak wages should be paid for.

to expand upon what D and Sasori said; we don't have penalty rates in the US. We have 2 sort of similar things:

Non-exempt employees, hourly guys (i.e, non management people) are required to be paid 150% of their hourly rate for ever hour worked per week in excess of 40 hours. 7.25 bucks an hour for 40 hours, 10.87 for the 41st hour up.

Exempt (non-hourly employees, typically contactors, management types) are salaried and do not receive overtime.

That's all the law requires. Some companies will also pay differentials, which are similar to what you describe: extra pay per hour for working third shift, or holidays, or for being bilingual, sometimes. In my (limited) experience these are not very common outside of manufacturing and not required there or anywhere else.

In addition, although this is not required, typically all 40 hour a week employees are considered full-time, and thus eligible for benefits if the employer provides them. This is why people in the lousiest industries (fast food, Walmart) will generally have their hours per week capped at 32 or so hours.

Finally, just to cover all the basic things an Australian might not know about American employment law, people who work in the service industry (wait staff, waiters etc - tipped employees) are paid differently. They are federally required to get $2.13 per hour and they keep tips, as long as the tips plus the base pay accrue to at least minimum wage. In other words, if they wind up working 10 hours and tips only come up to $50, management must instead pay them minimum wage ($72.50 I think now, for 10 hours), but if they make $150 in tips, they keep the $150 + the $21.30 base wage..


Individual states may require greater than anything above, but that's the federally required baseline.

 Ouze wrote:
That's all the law requires. Some companies will also pay differentials, which are similar to what you describe: extra pay per hour for working third shift, or holidays, or for being bilingual, sometimes. In my (limited) experience these are not very common outside of manufacturing and not required there or anywhere else.

A lot of construction trade unions go above and beyond what the law requires.

In my union (Steamfitters Local 602) we receive time and a half (150% of our base wage) for anything worked over 40 hours until we reach 60 hours. We then receive double time (200% base wage) for everything after the 61st hour. We also get +15% pay differential for any work done outside of our "normal work hours" for longer than two working weeks (i.e.- working night shift). Saturday is automatic time and a half and Sunday is automatic double time (if you have at least 40 hours worked that week). We have nine paid holidays and if we work on said holidays, we receive 8 hours of straight time plus time and half for any hours worked (so working an 8 hour day is equal to 8 hours of double time and a half).

Of course there are various stipulations on all of this and we also have a Supplemental Service Agreement (which I currently work under) that affects members that work for service companies as opposed to construction work. Those overtime rules are different based on the nature of service-oriented work (they have things like stand-by time and being on call to make emergency service repairs; things that construction workers do not have to typically deal with).

 Red_Zeke wrote:

Try applying that argument to anything else that requires expertise and coordination. The military for instance. "We're not at war, so disband the military." Time passes. "Oh snap! We're under attack! Collect and train a defense force on the double!"

Clearly there are issues with this correlation, but it's unrealistic to expect an organization to be effective if it has to completely demobilize/remobilize constantly.

Except that this is in essence, what does happen in between wars in the US. Sure the military isn't completely disbanded (as there's equipment that still needs to be maintained, etc.) but enough people are put out that it may as well have been. If you look at the history of the US military, you'll see it happen every single time we kick ass..

Come on, lets not be hyperbolic. Yes, there are defense cuts in peacetime, as there should be, but saying "it might as well be dismantled"?

Here's military spending since WW2:



Djones said in another thread that he saw budget cuts of 20 billion since 2009 (he didn't specify details as to how far they went or to whom). For perspective, tes, that's a lot of money, but if you have 600 bucks, and you decide to save twenty somewhere, lets not pretend the other 580 isn't still a massive, incredible, unbelievable number, more than China, Russia, the UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Brazil, and South Korea... combined.

Drawing down is a whole lot different than disbanding altogether.