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Re: "Are technical writers the unsung heroes of document generation?"
Subject:Re: "Are technical writers the unsung heroes of document generation?" From:Scott Turner <quills -at- airmail -dot- net> To:Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> Date:Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:56:05 -0700
The real down-side is that if you treat people like hourly employees, they will work like them. There is a totally different mindset that comes from working to a clock. If you tie my compensation to a time clock then you will only get the work from me in my job description for the time on the clock. Anything extra you WILL provide extra compensation.
As an exempt employee, my extra compensation comes from the flexibility that not having to work to a clock provides. I am not paid by the word, but for completing the tasks of my job in a timely manner.
Thus as an exempt employee an employer can ask me to do document design, writing, editing, sharepoint design and documentation and even management tasks within the organization. As a non-exempt employee I am bound by a much narrower designation of my job.
If the employer is so shortsighted as to tie a competent employee to a narrow job description and compensation plan, then their organizational competence is degraded. And it is probably safe to say that they follow the Gordon Gecko school of business philosophy.
> On Jun 23, 2015, at 13:38, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
>
> The sad thing for those writers who were perfectly happy being exempt and doing a bit of casual OT when needed without extra pay the same as the developers they work with is that that provision in the code wasn't even necessary for that case. Sun was already violating the CLC by requiring employees they classified as exempt to work mandatory OT.
>
> Exempt status is a lot like "independent contractor." If you start treating people you employ in that classification as if they were hourly employees, making them clock in and out or requiring them to work OT rather than just allowing them the discretion to work it when they decide they need to, in the eyes of the CLC you have converted them to non-exempt employee status and are required to pay them as such.
>
> I can't find any documentation to support, but my own personal theory is that someone in the NWU orchestrated this suit being filed based on that provision because the org wanted to be able to crow about the "great victory" it had won for writers in CA by pushing it through.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
>
>> On 6/23/2015 1:17 PM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
>> Few people were aware of California Labor Code Â515.5(b)(5) prior to
>> the filing of Hoenemier v. Sun Microsystems in 2008 and Oracle paying
>> $5 million to settle the action in 2010.
>
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