Companies give people fake "manager" titles, and save billions

[Nithavela]

Would you rather be a front-desk clerk or "Director of First Impressions"? A barber or a "Grooming Manager"?

How you answer could mean a significant difference in annual earnings. That's because companies routinely inflate workers' titles to avoid paying them in full for overtime work, according to researchers from the University of Texas and Harvard Business School.

Companies give people fake "manager" titles, and save billions

Calling your retail clerk an "assistant store manager" has a surprisingly big payoff, new research finds.

finance.yahoo.com

No, don't look at companies stealing your wages! Look at the balloon!

 

[iluvatar5150]

Companies give people fake "manager" titles, and save billions

Calling your retail clerk an "assistant store manager" has a surprisingly big payoff, new research finds.

finance.yahoo.com

No, don't look at companies stealing your wages! Look at the balloon!

Somebody in another thread told me that diligent workers were the ones most lied to get promoted. I guess they were right!

 

[Tuur]

Companies give people fake "manager" titles, and save billions

Calling your retail clerk an "assistant store manager" has a surprisingly big payoff, new research finds.

finance.yahoo.com

No, don't look at companies stealing your wages! Look at the balloon!

To steal something, you must take something that isn't yours. If someone is willing to work for a title instead of money, that is their choice and that title is part of their wages.

To give an inflated title without accompanying authority or greater remuneration is a dodge so old, it's been lampooned for at least century.

 

[Nithavela]

To steal something, you must take something that isn't yours. If someone is willing to work for a title instead of money, that is their choice and that title is part of their wages.

By that same logic, one could abolish the minimum wage. After all, if someone chooses to work for 2 Dollars an hour, that's their choice and they have no right to complain.

I bet that in many jobs, it's not a choice of "title or money", it's a choice of "title or you're fired".

 

[Estrid]

Companies give people fake "manager" titles, and save billions

Calling your retail clerk an "assistant store manager" has a surprisingly big payoff, new research finds.

finance.yahoo.com

No, don't look at companies stealing your wages! Look at the balloon!

That is not news

 

[Hans Blaster]

That is not news

The general pattern, no, but I think what is news is the precision application of those "titles".

When I saw the OP headline I thought it was the usual "fluffing": giving and empty title to keep an employee from demanding higher wages or leaving. Titles like "assistant to the regional manager" or "executive delivery boy". (Points for naming the fictional holders of these empty titles.) But, as noted above it's way worse than that.

It's about converting hourly workers with overtime to salaried workers without overtime pay to reduce labor costs.

Since the threshold is equivalent to $445/week, I'll take an hourly worker making $11/hour working a full 40-hour work week. ($440/week, below threshold). If they are needed to work an extra 5 hours one week they get $55 + 50% ($25.50) more ($80.50) that week. If the boss converts them to assistant managing clerk at $450/week, they can now be asked to work more than 40 hours with no additional pay.

The article reports a study showing that the occurrence of this "trick" has a big spike right at the threshold salary.

 

[Tuur]

By that same logic, one could abolish the minimum wage. After all, if someone chooses to work for 2 Dollars an hour, that's their choice and they have no right to complain.

I bet that in many jobs, it's not a choice of "title or money", it's a choice of "title or you're fired".

Theft, by definition involves taking something that doesn't belong to you, Whatever you think of it, it's not theft.

Something passed along by a grandfather who remembered a former slave who heard a younger fellow complain that so-and-so had beat him out of something.

Finally, the former slave said "Did so-and-so pay you what he promised?"
"Yes," said the young man.
"Did he hold a gun to your head and make you work for that?"
"No."
"Then so-and-so didn't beat you out of nothing. You beat yourself out of it."

That stuck with my grandfather, and it's stuck with me. Because something is offered doesn't mean you have to take it. You may choose to because the prospect of unemployment can be scary, or because it's a nice, shiny, bauble. Ultimately, though, the choice is yours.

Disclosure: I myself hold a highfalutin title that won't even buy a soft drink. I was awarded the title by an outside group. My guess that some companies give that title to those they foist a particular task on.

"That? I don't want to do that."

"But it comes with a title. See the title. See how pretty and shiny it is?"

"But-"

"See the nice, shiny, title? So shiny, so pretty."

"Well...all right."

 

[Tuur]

It's about converting hourly workers with overtime to salaried workers without overtime pay to reduce labor costs.

Since the threshold is equivalent to $445/week, I'll take an hourly worker making $11/hour working a full 40-hour work week. ($440/week, below threshold). If they are needed to work an extra 5 hours one week they get $55 + 50% ($25.50) more ($80.50) that week. If the boss converts them to assistant managing clerk at $450/week, they can now be asked to work more than 40 hours with no additional pay.

Heh. I recall some getting excited when they became salaried. The rest of us knew what was going on. Since this particular business can rack up significant overtime, that can be a big ding to income.

Being hourly, when I had to work every single paid holiday one year due to weather and Murphey's Third Law, I received double pay for that time. Had I been salaried, I don't think I'd have seen anything extra.

 

[Nithavela]

Theft, by definition involves taking something that doesn't belong to you, Whatever you think of it, it's not theft.

Something passed along by a grandfather who remembered a former slave who heard a younger fellow complain that so-and-so had beat him out of something.

Finally, the former slave said "Did so-and-so pay you what he promised?"
"Yes," said the young man.
"Did he hold a gun to your head and make you work for that?"
"No."
"Then so-and-so didn't beat you out of nothing. You beat yourself out of it."

That stuck with my grandfather, and it's stuck with me. Because something is offered doesn't mean you have to take it. You may choose to because the prospect of unemployment can be scary, or because it's a nice, shiny, bauble. Ultimately, though, the choice is yours.

Disclosure: I myself hold a highfalutin title that won't even buy a soft drink. I was awarded the title by an outside group. My guess that some companies give that title to those they foist a particular task on.

"That? I don't want to do that."

"But it comes with a title. See the title. See how pretty and shiny it is?"

"But-"

"See the nice, shiny, title? So shiny, so pretty."

"Well...all right."

Employees are entitled to overtime payment as per the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). When their overtime payment is taken away because they get a fake title foisted on them, that's wage theft. You can write as many stories as you like, this fact is not changed.

 

[Tuur]

Employees are entitled to overtime payment as per the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). When their overtime payment is taken away because they get a fake title foisted on them, that's wage theft. You can write as many stories as you like, this fact is not changed.

Did they agree to it? Yes or no.

 

[Nithavela]

Did they agree to it? Yes or no.

If the choice is "agree to this demand or get fired", it's not a real choice, especially if this practice is so widespread in the industry that there's no job where it isn't used. With so many people in the USA living from hand to mouth, there are plenty of people who can't afford to leave their job and go hunting for a job.

This is why there are rules for things like minimum wage or overtime pay in the first place, to give more bargaining power to the employees. US employees have little enough rights as it is, with people in other countries having far more mandatory rights.

But it seems like you are firm in your stance that as long as people aren't forced to do something at gun point, it's their fault if they agree to do it, no matter the circumstances or unfairness. After all, they could have just starved to death, so why are they complaining?

I honestly don't want to discuss any further with someone who holds such convictions.

 

[Aryeh Jay]

I am just happy that there are still defenders of capitalism like Walmart that don't pay overtime for holidays.

The thought of the hardships that the shareholders and Walton kids would have to be put through made me sad.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I am just happy that there are still defenders of capitalism like Walmart that don't pay overtime for holidays.

The thought of the hardships that the shareholders and Walton kids would have to be put through made me sad.

IIRC, Wal*Mart used to be notorious for limiting hours to prevent triggering requirements to provide benefits (I want to say 30 hours/week), especially health insurance, for their regular, not just holiday workers. I seem to recall this was largely fixed for regular, semi-full time workers. (Perhaps by the ACA?)

And before we get such a feedback, I have no problem with not being required to provide benefits for seasonal workers. It makes no sense to start a 6-week health plan. (I've worked, full-time+ seasonal jobs in the past.)

 

[Estrid]

I am just happy that there are still defenders of capitalism like Walmart that don't pay overtime for holidays.

The thought of the hardships that the shareholders and Walton kids would have to be put through made me sad.

Shareholders include Walmart workers
who take advantage of the store
matching their share purchases.

There are retirement funds that invest
and benefit from dividends.

Your sarcasm is misplaced.

As for the anticapitalist bit may
you learn how you like living without
it.

My family was devastated by the
time the Japanese left.
Hong Kong itself was nothing.
pre- capitalism.
Look how comfortably I live now
how few fishing shacks there are
here now.

If you speak Cantonese I'd like to
turn you over to my uncle, late of the
Red Guard.
He still believes in Mao but none
of us will listen to him.

Google Image Result for https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hong_Kong_Harbour_Night_2019-06-11.jpg

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Shareholders include Walmart workers
who take advantage of the store
matching their share purchases.

There are retirement funds that invest
and benefit from dividends.

Your sarcasm is misplaced.

As for the anticapitalist bit may
you learn how you like living without
it.

My family was devastated by the
time the Japanese left.
Hong Kong itself was nothing.
pre- capitalism.
Look how comfortably I live now
how few fishing shacks there are
here now.

If you speak Cantonese I'd like to
turn you over to my uncle, late of the
Red Guard.
He still believes in Mao but none
of us will listen to him.

Google Image Result for https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hong_Kong_Harbour_Night_2019-06-11.jpg

I wish I spoke Cantonese.

I am familiar with how Walmart operates, as my daughter likes to remind me, we were a three generation Walmart family.

But the Walmart of the 1970s and 80s is not the same as today.

Your uncle sounds pretty cool, to have lived through those times. Chairman Mao is supposed to be a bad guy in the West, but he took a country that was fractured and used by European powers and united it and turned it from a mostly agrarian society into one of the world's greatest powers.

 

[Pommer]

If Congress got rid of the “management is exempt” rule, this would “go away” too.
Where’s the lobbyists for “the little guy”?

 

[Aryeh Jay]

If Congress got rid of the “management is exempt” rule, this would “go away” too.
Where’s the lobbyists for “the little guy”?

When I worked for a Swiss company based in Vevey, my subordinates would look at my pay stub on my desk and exclaim "boy, you got it made". I told them to divide the number by 130 and not 80. It didn't seem like that much after that.

The job was in the US. The company is Swiss.

 

[Pommer]

When I worked for a Swiss company based in Vevey, my subordinates would look at my pay stub on my desk and exclaim "boy, you got it made". I told them to divide the number by 130 and not 80. It didn't seem like that much after that.

The job was in the US. The company is Swiss.

I see you’re sporting a new avatar picture, nice!

 

[Aryeh Jay]

I see you’re sporting a new avatar picture, nice!

Yeah, it's from last January. I just figured out how to do it, but it made me enter a religion again. I went ahead and just put Judaism again.

 

[Aryeh Jay]

I see you’re sporting a new avatar picture, nice!

Ha! Our JAG lawyer suggested I not be in uniform.