This law was random and unthoughtful, that is why it is being contested.
If you agree with the legislation and have a business model that allows you to pay interns endless overtime, you are free to implement it.
However, for most of us, as small business owners already struggling to manage workflow and charge enough fee to sustain our offices, the law eliminated our ability to adopt policies that make sense for our businesses.
For example, I know many firms that have flextime policies similar to what Gerald mentioned in his post. That would no longer be allowed under this law. In our office, project workflow is often impacted by client issues not within our control. Our workload is not consistent. Everyone is on salary and we address this with a typical 35 hour work week with occasional deadline crunches that average out close to 40 hours per week over the course of a year. This also would not be allowed under the new law. In any particular week when 40 hours of work is exceeded time and a half pay is mandated, but there is no way for us to capture the less than 40 hour weeks without converting everyone to hourly pay. I know many firms who did convert to hourly pay upon news of this pending legislation. However, this creates new issues that are problematic and will ultimately discourage firms from hiring beginning interns. Architecture education does not prepare students to be productive members of firms, this is sad but true. There is a reason why office experience is a licensure requirement, it is a critical component of our professional education. It is not fair and makes absolutely no business sense to pay inexperienced staff more in overtime because it takes them longer to complete a task than experienced staff. Work is worth what you get paid to do it. If it takes someone 25% more time to complete the same task as someone else, why should they be paid more to do it? This law would artificially value inexperienced staff higher than people with more experience with mandated overtime. No one would ever hire students right out of school when they could hire someone with experience who can work more efficiently, which does not serve the profession. Many countries of foreign exchange students will pay an intern's salary because they know the value of this office experience. We have not figured out in this country how to educate architects to be productive professionals. Internship, in my opinion, should be formally part of the education process. Offices tend to know exactly how much someone's time is worth, and those that converted from salaries to hourly wages in anticipation of this law simply reduced their hourly rates in order to compensate appropriately. No difference, because you can't pay people more than they are worth and still stay in business.
------------------------------
Cheryl Noel AIA
Wrap Architecture
Chicago IL
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 04-12-2017 19:10
From: Nelson B. Nave
Subject: Non-Exempt Employees and the new FLSA Requirements
I agree with Catherine. I don't know how that did not pass.