Matt Gaetz

Quote: GenoDRPh

55 hours a week for me is 15 hours at time and a half. 3 hours a week more is 3 hours at time a half. Sign me up! Unless you want to take away overtime as well...

Quote: SOOPOO

You know I was not on overtime, per se. As a partner, there was a certain pot of money to divvy up, and it was just expected that you’d work ‘around’ those 55 hours a week. If we all, as partners, wanted to work 40 hours, I guess we would have hired 3 or 4 more docs, but that of course would have proportionally lowered our salaries.

I am not for getting rid of overtime. I am for NOT having the government tell a company and an employer what they MUST pay for OT. Once again, remind me why our government should prevent a company negotiating the overtime salary for a given employee? What magic says it should be time and a half?

Quote: GenoDRPh

Because our government is of the people, by the people, for the people. Our government has an interest in making sure relationships between employers and employees are fair and equitable. Our government has an interest in making sure imbalances of power do not weigh to heavily in one direction as employer-employee relationships usually do. So our government sets a floor for wages. And nothing is stopping the employer and the employee negotiating a higher OT rate. It sets a maximum for number of hours in a work week for straight time and anything over that is overtime paid at a premium. Why is OT paid at time and half and not some other rate? Beats me. Maybe the OT rate is a compromise to incentivize workers into agreeing to work OT if offered and to properly compensate them if mandated. It also is low enough to make it palatable enough for employers to pay OT if business needs require OT work, and just high enough for employers to think twice about requiring OT work all the time. So far it's been working since the 1930s.

Quote: Tanko

The DOJ ended their investigation of Gaetz, citing lack of credibility of key witnesses. One of them is currently serving an eleven year sentence.

He may not get confirmed, but if he does, it will be interesting to see what he finds. Assuming DOJ officials have not already destroyed certain records.

Fifteen minutes of Gaetz grilling an evasive Merrick Garland.

Quote: SOOPOO

Without parsing over the details…. You want the government to take care of you…. I want the government to let me take care of myself. I do understand and agree with government regulation on certain safety issues. Certain non discrimination issues. Just essentially randomly defining how many hours a workweek is, and what a business must pay after that random number has been breached, is overreach to me.
Imbalances of power? As long as no one is forced to work for any particular company, how does the employer have that power advantage? Only work for a company that offers fair wages, fair OT rules, fair sick time rules. If company A doesn’t, but company B does, who will be able to attract the best workers? And which company would you choose to work for?

Quote: GenoDRPh

I want it to be a fairer fight and employer-employee relations have historically rarely been fair. The 40 hour work week was instituted after careful analysis of worker productivity and health. It was and is good business to keep workers healthy and productive. The OT rules fairly compensate workers for their time, as time is money. You would have us all go back to the days of sweatshops and low poverty wages with employers saying, "It's the going rate."

A judicious and appropriate use of the government's legal power to provide for the general welfare and to regulate commerce.

Quote: SOOPOO

I literally took 1 hour off for the birth of my first child. Was doing 24 hour overnight shift and got call at 5:30am that wifey needed me to take her to hospital ‘soon’. Got relief from OR by 6am, baby at 4pm, back to work for next scheduled shift by 7am.
Got lucky for baby 2 and needed no time off.
I didn’t say there is never a reason to take a day off. I said, or if not specific, implied, that certain jobs you shouldn’t take multiple consecutive weeks/months off. I took literally just a few ‘sick days’ off during my 35 year career.

Your attitude is just different than mine. I may be in the minority on this.

But here’s my retirement story. I ‘accrued’ an ungodly amount of sick time during the second half of my career. I was in a union, and I think I got the equivalent of TEN days off a year. You could sell your vacation time back for good $$, but sick time unused got you a pension credit only worth maybe 10% of what vacation time could be sold for. Others upon nearing retirement would just start taking planned sick days…. I think unethically. And then still sell their unused vacation time. I retired with around 1/2 year of sick time.

It’s just the difference between you and me.