July 3, 2003

Dear Sir,

I have a couple of questions for Minister Lister about the proposed implementation of mandatory overtime for those who don't fall within the "managerial or professional" category, and who are not employed in the industries to be exempted.

1. If I currently have an employee on an annual salary that was calculated to cover occasional overtime, and the employee was informed and agreed to this, will I be allowed to reduce the annual salary accordingly when I begin paying overtime?

2. Will there be any payroll tax rate reductions or any other concessions to cover the cost of implementing and administering a time and attendance system to accurately monitor and track overtime hours?

3. Can I define 'managerial and professional' myself (and defend this to the Employment Act Tribunal as needed), or will I be provided with some sort of guideline along the lines of the 'exempt/non exempt' classes in the US?

4. If I cannot afford to pay overtime, presumably I am free to limit my full-time employees to a 40-hour week, and hire part-time employees to do the overtime. This will require some training in some cases, but if the work isn't complex then it might be worth it. Then another employer can hire my full-time workers for part-time work after hours, as they'll probably want to still earn the additional money at straight time.

5. Alternatively, if I can't afford to pay overtime, I presume I am free to require 100 percent productivity from my employees during the 40-hour work week, and start getting a bit stricter about those concessions that I currently make for the occasional personal call or appointment during working hours. That will change the culture in my organisation, but maybe that is just the price of progress.

If the aim of this change is to correct situations where employees are unfairly forced into agreeing to overtime for no additional pay or straight time, then making overtime mandatory seems like a sledgehammer approach. There are many employees out there who accept and don't mind doing occasional overtime for no additional pay - their salaries and jobs reflect the need to do this on occasion.

Why penalise all employers with the additional administration and cost of tracking hours and potentially paying overtime? Why penalise employees who are fine with doing overtime for straight time, as they are probably going to loose this opportunity to part-time workers? Wouldn't it make more sense to identify the few situations where true abuse is occurring and penalise those specific employers?

I apologise for the nom de plume, but I don't want to risk jeopardising my future dealings with Minister Lister and his Ministry. After all, the Minister has a healthy allowance of discretionary judgement about matters that cross his desk.

JUST WONDERING

Paget