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> This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers

by Smudge 12y ago

> This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole ... We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps towards securing future compliance. I'm surprised they're getting praised so much for complying. It's not like they had a choice. Instead of commending them on their newfound diligence, we should be asking why and how these overtime violations occurred in the first place. Was it a systemic problem with lower management incentives? How far up did knowledge of the violations extend? Why wasn't it detected until now, and what can we do to prevent it from happening elsewhere, not just within LinkedIn?

tinco 12y ago
This looks to me like a cultural problem, not only in the IT sector but in all sectors where high performance is a measurably inductor to profit. I hope this case sets a precedent and will lead to employees whistle-blowing organisations where overtime goes untracked and unpaid. It's ridiculous that employees would work their guts out for companies that they don't hold significant shares in without receiving even normal hourly pay.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  Uh, it was because LinkedIn was guilty of overtime of non exempt employees. I find that in most shops I have seen nearly everyone is exempt. I record hours per day for my work, I am fully exempt. Many in the tech industry will voluntarily put in excessive hours and this causes pressure on others to do similar, unless within a protected class of workers.
  - maerF0x0 12y ago
    To me it begs the question why there is an exempt class? To me its like saying some people are exempt from the realities that inform the 40 hr work week. Things like productivity research, health and wellness research etc.
    - rmrfrmrf 12y ago
      Not every job is based around clocking in and clocking out, though, and there are a lot of complications for things like traveling, lunch meetings, and business trips. There are also strict laws about overtime pay and the max time that a person is allowed to work before being required a break. There's also the issue of employees recording their own times worked (it's a compliance nightmare that can lead to lots of payment adjustments, fines, and/or lawsuits).
      - maerF0x0 12y ago
        Of course not all jobs are based around clocking in and clocking out production line style. However, that knowledge informs when the hours are performed, not the quantity of hours. If your job duties are flexible and can be performed at anytime, why not pay "overtime" when someone has to work 60 hrs a week to cover their duties (or not get "let go" due to appearances) ? Dont get me wrong, I know ahead of time that I will be required to work more than 40 hrs a week and thus price it into my salary, making the overall points a little moot in practice. But, there is something odd, a smell of sorts, about saying "You get your salary for 40 hrs a week, and the other 20 are not paid" ... Say I would only work for $30 an hour, and I know the employer is going to require 60 hrs a week of work, then I'd only settle for a salary that is 3000*30 = $90k a year. If the employer has a standard that says "I will pay you for overtime" then I can accept a salary of 60k a year and know that I will make $30k in overtime pay. The real hard part comes when the work is presumed the later and is the former in reality. One takes a wage on the presumption of 40 hrs a week and ends up working 60.. decreasing their compensation for time by 33% .
- kmfrk 12y ago
  There's a fundamental misconception about things like labour violations and general mistreatment: workplaces only do it knowingly. Corporations liked LinkedIn ought know better, but smaller companies don't get the 101 on things like this. This is one of many opportunities for companies like YC to lay out some of these 101s and work to make them industry standards.
conistonwater 12y ago
There is a cynical and pessimistic interpretation (just an idle thought; I know nothing at all): the investigators are stretched thin, so instead of investigating anything themselves, they instead ask LinkedIn to investigate itself. LinkedIn slaps itself a little bit, writes a report, agrees to a settlement, maybe manages to soften some language or push its own interpretation of events, "we did this, this and this, but we never ever did any of that". The investigators never had enough resources to do an investigation on their own, they check that LinkedIn's report is roughly as stern as their own report would have been based on evidence and interpretations presented in LinkedIn's report and what investigators already knew, agree to a settlement. The outcome is that LinkedIn is "punished" and investigators look like they are doing their job.
- mreiland 12y ago
  does it really matter when they did the thing in the first place? It's like congratulating a car thief for being an upstanding citizen because they admitted to the thievery and promised never to do it again after paying a fine.
  - Flow 12y ago
    If that actually worked, it would be ideal :)
  - biot 12y ago
    Since we're going with car analogies, it's more like a company leases a fleet of vehicles where each vehicle can be driven up to 20,000 km/year for the price negotiated. However, the cars don't have odometers to keep track of distance traveled. The dealership who leased the cars thinks that they've been driven further and complains to the Department of Transport. The DoT investigates and adds up third-party records of everywhere the cars have been and finds out that some vehicles were routinely driven more than 20,000 km in the prior year. The company agrees to pay the agreed-upon rate for any overage distance per vehicle plus a proportional fine and also agrees to add an odometer to the vehicles to track actual mileage in the future.
    - 12y ago
larrys 12y ago
As I've put in my other comment elsewhere I got hit with a DOL action many years ago. It definitely wasn't willful but we were running afoul of some hidden rule that even some lawyers had never heard of and didn't know about. One employee complained, they investigated and audited, and we got fined and had to pay back wages. I'm not commenting on why or what linkedin did only providing perspective that it can happen for less nefarious reasons.
- Smudge 12y ago
  Interesting perspective. It's unfortunate that you can get bit even when trying to play fair. Even if LinkedIn's mistake was similarly unwitting, we should try to learn something from it. Maybe the rules have become too complex, or maybe more guidance is needed to help employers stay within the lines.
- spoondan 12y ago
  I'm curious about your story. Did the employee not complain to management prior to involving DOL? If the employee did, what happened that the employee's complaint was not accurately assessed and resolved? And if the employee did not, do you have an idea of why? I mean these as honest questions. The law is complicated, and it's easy to accidentally run afoul of some provision somewhere while acting in good faith. Outside of retribution, it's preferable to resolve these situations amicably. It's faster for the employee and less risky for the business. So when I hear these kinds of stories, I like to identify where the breakdown happened. Was it a bad hire? A broken reporting process? A failure of the lawyers to assess the claim?
  - larrys 12y ago
    "Did the employee not complain to management prior to involving DOL?" Definitely not. Was a small company so I would have known. "And if the employee did not, do you have an idea of why?" I think they were probably upset about something else. One interesting thing was the DOL office was a mere 2 blocks from our office. Perhaps that played into it. (More detail in my other reply)

by Smudge 12y ago

tinco 12y ago

This looks to me like a cultural problem, not only in the IT sector but in all sectors where high performance is a measurably inductor to profit. I hope this case sets a precedent and will lead to employees whistle-blowing organisations where overtime goes untracked and unpaid. It's ridiculous that employees would work their guts out for companies that they don't hold significant shares in without receiving even normal hourly pay.

Shivetya 12y ago
Uh, it was because LinkedIn was guilty of overtime of non exempt employees. I find that in most shops I have seen nearly everyone is exempt. I record hours per day for my work, I am fully exempt. Many in the tech industry will voluntarily put in excessive hours and this causes pressure on others to do similar, unless within a protected class of workers.
- maerF0x0 12y ago
  To me it begs the question why there is an exempt class? To me its like saying some people are exempt from the realities that inform the 40 hr work week. Things like productivity research, health and wellness research etc.
  - rmrfrmrf 12y ago
    Not every job is based around clocking in and clocking out, though, and there are a lot of complications for things like traveling, lunch meetings, and business trips. There are also strict laws about overtime pay and the max time that a person is allowed to work before being required a break. There's also the issue of employees recording their own times worked (it's a compliance nightmare that can lead to lots of payment adjustments, fines, and/or lawsuits).
    - maerF0x0 12y ago
      Of course not all jobs are based around clocking in and clocking out production line style. However, that knowledge informs when the hours are performed, not the quantity of hours. If your job duties are flexible and can be performed at anytime, why not pay "overtime" when someone has to work 60 hrs a week to cover their duties (or not get "let go" due to appearances) ? Dont get me wrong, I know ahead of time that I will be required to work more than 40 hrs a week and thus price it into my salary, making the overall points a little moot in practice. But, there is something odd, a smell of sorts, about saying "You get your salary for 40 hrs a week, and the other 20 are not paid" ... Say I would only work for $30 an hour, and I know the employer is going to require 60 hrs a week of work, then I'd only settle for a salary that is 3000*30 = $90k a year. If the employer has a standard that says "I will pay you for overtime" then I can accept a salary of 60k a year and know that I will make $30k in overtime pay. The real hard part comes when the work is presumed the later and is the former in reality. One takes a wage on the presumption of 40 hrs a week and ends up working 60.. decreasing their compensation for time by 33% .
kmfrk 12y ago
There's a fundamental misconception about things like labour violations and general mistreatment: workplaces only do it knowingly. Corporations liked LinkedIn ought know better, but smaller companies don't get the 101 on things like this. This is one of many opportunities for companies like YC to lay out some of these 101s and work to make them industry standards.

conistonwater 12y ago

There is a cynical and pessimistic interpretation (just an idle thought; I know nothing at all): the investigators are stretched thin, so instead of investigating anything themselves, they instead ask LinkedIn to investigate itself. LinkedIn slaps itself a little bit, writes a report, agrees to a settlement, maybe manages to soften some language or push its own interpretation of events, "we did this, this and this, but we never ever did any of that". The investigators never had enough resources to do an investigation on their own, they check that LinkedIn's report is roughly as stern as their own report would have been based on evidence and interpretations presented in LinkedIn's report and what investigators already knew, agree to a settlement. The outcome is that LinkedIn is "punished" and investigators look like they are doing their job.

mreiland 12y ago
does it really matter when they did the thing in the first place? It's like congratulating a car thief for being an upstanding citizen because they admitted to the thievery and promised never to do it again after paying a fine.
- Flow 12y ago
  If that actually worked, it would be ideal :)
- biot 12y ago
  Since we're going with car analogies, it's more like a company leases a fleet of vehicles where each vehicle can be driven up to 20,000 km/year for the price negotiated. However, the cars don't have odometers to keep track of distance traveled. The dealership who leased the cars thinks that they've been driven further and complains to the Department of Transport. The DoT investigates and adds up third-party records of everywhere the cars have been and finds out that some vehicles were routinely driven more than 20,000 km in the prior year. The company agrees to pay the agreed-upon rate for any overage distance per vehicle plus a proportional fine and also agrees to add an odometer to the vehicles to track actual mileage in the future.
  - 12y ago

larrys 12y ago

As I've put in my other comment elsewhere I got hit with a DOL action many years ago. It definitely wasn't willful but we were running afoul of some hidden rule that even some lawyers had never heard of and didn't know about. One employee complained, they investigated and audited, and we got fined and had to pay back wages. I'm not commenting on why or what linkedin did only providing perspective that it can happen for less nefarious reasons.

Smudge 12y ago
Interesting perspective. It's unfortunate that you can get bit even when trying to play fair. Even if LinkedIn's mistake was similarly unwitting, we should try to learn something from it. Maybe the rules have become too complex, or maybe more guidance is needed to help employers stay within the lines.
spoondan 12y ago
I'm curious about your story. Did the employee not complain to management prior to involving DOL? If the employee did, what happened that the employee's complaint was not accurately assessed and resolved? And if the employee did not, do you have an idea of why? I mean these as honest questions. The law is complicated, and it's easy to accidentally run afoul of some provision somewhere while acting in good faith. Outside of retribution, it's preferable to resolve these situations amicably. It's faster for the employee and less risky for the business. So when I hear these kinds of stories, I like to identify where the breakdown happened. Was it a bad hire? A broken reporting process? A failure of the lawyers to assess the claim?
- larrys 12y ago
  "Did the employee not complain to management prior to involving DOL?" Definitely not. Was a small company so I would have known. "And if the employee did not, do you have an idea of why?" I think they were probably upset about something else. One interesting thing was the DOL office was a mere 2 blocks from our office. Perhaps that played into it. (More detail in my other reply)