Exempt Employee Blues 5

[miner00]

As most of you know, engineers are generally considered exempt employees under the FLSA. My question is if we have any rights under this act. In my situation, I have all of the negatives of an exempt employee (no paid overtime, no sick days, no maximum work week) but I also have the negatives of non-exempt ("punch time clock", set work hours). My main question is this:

Say you work a long week and by mid-day on Friday you have worked 44 hours. Further say that you want to take friday afternoon off to visit the doctor, beat traffic out of town, etc. Should you have to take 4 hours of vacation or sick time to leave early when you have already worked more than a 40 hour week? Would this qualify as a salary reduction and wouldn't we be protected against this?

I have no plans to act on this situation, but it would be helpful to know whether I am being taken advantage of in deciding future career plans.

 

[TheBlacksmith]

Its obvious that management will do whatever it can to enhance the price of the (worthless) company stock they are stuffing your 401K with, so all this sacrifice you are going through now is so you can afford Alpo dog food when you're 75 years old instead of the store brand!

Blacksmith

 

[a3a]

Has anyone had experiences with construction companies? I wonder if the same stories would be told about them as I am hearing (and have experienced) about the engineering/design oriented companies. I image that this is just a corporate reality that any company tries to do.

I'm sure that the schedule demands and overtime (in general) are likely a little more for the construction companies, but do they compensate their staff better than the engineering side? I'm not talking about construction laborers/carpenters, though I know they can compete with the salaries of many engineers with the overtime they get paid for.

I ask this because I've always heard the the construction side offers better compensation than engineering. But do they really (considering the hours worked)?

 

In my many years as a machinist working for many different companies, I have always had this philosophy: Be as damned good as you can at your job so that when you leave to take a better one, it's more than a little painful for that company. Has anyone ever heard the saying "just say no"? When management tries giving you the shaft, it's a lot easier saying "no" and getting by with it if you are the best engineer/machinist/whatever for that company. There are a whole bunch of over-educated simpletons out there who are on the top rung position-wise, and it doesn't get you anywhere by kissing their ass. I've always found that if you don't like a place, it's better to leave and find a better one. Just my opinion. As always, ornery!

 

[RDK]

a3a

In Canada every professional association and the national council puts out a salary survey. See

http://www.apem.mb.ca

for the Manitoba site or

http://www.ccpe

for the national site.

You can track salary levels by discipline, additional degrees, industry and by a point rating.

Yes construction engineers are generally better paid than office engineers (at least in Canada). They also work longer hours, have more layoffs, work under more adverse conditions, have less job security and are often away from home.

If you want the life it is a lot more satisfying to actually see something being built and to have a major impact in the construction than to sit in an office and design all day.
Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com