Fox host: Overtime pay isn’t fair to companies because it makes employees too greedy

[okaawhatever]

Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Thursday asserted that paying overtime could stifle companies like Google, and that a proposed White House change to overtime rules was essentially “buying votes.”

Bloomberg News reported this week that the Obama administration was considering directing the Labor Department to make more American workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule change was expected to target fast food and retail companies which often label workers as “supervisors” or “managers” so they do not have to be paid for more than 40 hours of work.

The Washington-based Economic Policy Institute has said it supports the rule change for workers who make less than $50,000.


“It changes your quality of life when you know you can’t be required to work an extra 20 hours a week without being paid for it,” Economic Policy Institute Vice President Ross Eisenbrey told Bloomberg. “The restaurant industry is famous for doing this, for calling people assistant managers.”

But in an appearance on Fox News on Thursday, Varney said the Obama administration was trying “dictate income in the private sector.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/13/fox-host-overtime-pay-isnt-fair-to-companies-because-it-makes-employees-too-greedy/
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The story is continued at the link, and gives us our newest right wing talking point. Apparently the creators of right wing messaging have a new one. "Income redistribution through executive order"

[mucifer]

1. Ok so how are people making low wages gonna wanna watch that crap??

I don't get it.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. I venture a guess

that a large segment of their audience earns NO wages, i.e., retirees - many of whom don't give a toss about the struggles of those who are still wage slaves.

[EC]

11. Look at their commercials

they aren't even considering the regular working stiff as watching them.

[Dwayne Hicks]

2. What a TOOL

Fox viewers really must be the dregs of the country if they buy into this nonsense.

[Thinkingabout]

3. On the other hand, not paying overtime to employees has made greedy companies.

[okaawhatever]

6. Good one. Ditto the lower wages and taxes they have right now. Many people ignored one of Krugman's

best arguments against income inequality, which was that businesses were becoming lazy and inefficient.

[Scuba]

4. Fox host: Pay isn’t fair to companies because it makes "employees" too greedy

[brewens]

7. I worked for one comany that put me on salary and forced me to work ten or twenty hour a week

for free. I had a wine rout and they made sure to organize it so you never came close to 40 hours. They were total bastards.

Another guy I worked for gave us a choice sometimes. If he told us he bid a job pretty close and couldn't afford the OT, we could work for cash under the table at regular pay. It was a small construction outfit and though he would rather have I and another opperator on the job, he'd give those hours to the rookies if we didn't want to do it. He was a fair guy and I really appreciated that. Other times when he hit a home run on a bid, we'd get extra help, he'd take us out for steaks and we'd ride home drinking beer all the way!

For the first company, I would have been happy to just get regular time for all those hours over 40 but that would have been illegal to put on the books. I'd say that should be a legal option but it couldn't be mandatory. That would of course be wide open to all kinds of abuse I suppose too. You could easily force a guy to agree to that if he wanted to keep his job.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. You nailed it......

they could force employees to agree to whatever they want, just to keep their jobs. This is why the laws have to be specific.

I worked a salaried "management" position so they wouldn't have to pay overtime for the 15-20 hours extra I had to work every week, but it was bullshit. I had no decision-making ability, I wasn't allowed to manage my way out of a paper bag. That is why the laws have to be very firm on what is and is not subject to overtime pay.

But personally, I do not believe that ANY employee should be exempted from overtime pay for hours over 40 in a week.

[brewens]

12. In may case on the wine rout, it was a money making company as well that could easily

have afforded a couple more trucks and guys out there. It was also a classic example of non-job creators. One owner was a woman that was left the majority share when her husband died and the other was a guy that was in really good with her husband that got his brother to pony up the money to buy him in. He was never a full time driver even before that, just a kiss-ass.

Then it was a competition to see who could suck the most money out of the company. No Reagan era tax strategy or any of that got those two to invest a dime in their business. They didn't know how. I don't even think they ever had a tax guy helping them with strategy on when to but new equipment and take advantage of code that was written especially for them.

I was told their rule was that they never bought a new truck until the previous one was paid for. They seemed to follow that. So what happens when you have two obsolete trucks that desperately need to be replaced? All three times I saw them buy new bigger more moder trucks, they were maxed out capacity wise and sales went up on that rout. Believe it or not though, all three times we got those trucks in the fall, after the busy season. WTF sense could that make? We suffered through the summer getting by with junk and then we get the new truck! Unless they did have an accountant strategizing their needing to make the deal in that particular quarter to take advantage of some tax angle, it was insane! It really had to be just flat-assed stupidity but it was such a cash cow that they still made money. They just never realized how much more money they could have been making had they run things right.

[laundry_queen]

17. I agree. Salaried or not, employees should get overtime.

Too many companies try to get around it with salaries. I know plenty of people that has happened to.

It costs jobs too, because when they get 2-3 employees to work an extra 15 hours or so a week, they don't have to hire an extra person. Yes, there should be regulations surrounding it, because whatever a corporation CAN get away with, they WILL.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

9. I am so goddamned sick of these motherfuckers! nt

[geomon666]

10. Where the fuck do they find these people?

Is there some degree mill that just spits these vermin out? How dare these people expect to be paid for labor! Does Stuart Varney work for free? I bet your sweet ass he doesn't.

[winter is coming]

13. If you don't want to pay overtime rates, you could always hire more people. n/t

[Springslips]

14. I thought greed was good?

It one thing to have an idiotic opinion. And if they do they are entitled to that idiotic opinion, just as long as they stay consistent. But when they attack their own idiotic opinion with another, counter idiotic opinion it just make them seem like an idiot arguing with themselves idiotically.

Either greed is good, or it is bad. They need to pick one and stay with it!

When they don't they look like a gigantic idiotic idiot!

[Springslips]

15. Also to add.

I noticed, after rereading the article, that they undermined another fav conservative argument.

Google, they say would never have happen if not for all the overtime employees put in. But I thought that they believed it was the owners that created companies? You know, we built this? So now they admit that it is the work if the employees that create the success of start-ups like google?

[Cha]

16. They must be rotting from the inside out.