New Overtime Laws

[Footer]

If you don't know already, Obama signed an executive order that raised the threshhold for overtime salaried "exempt" employees from salary's that equal 455 dollars a week to salary's that equal 913 dollars a week. In other words if you are salaried and make less then 48k a year you will now be entitled to overtime if you work over 40 hours a week. This law goes into affect December 1, 2016.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/faq.htm#8

Been asking around to other people in the area about this. Many are hourly already and don't care. However, a few that this would greatly affect don't know about it. There is no non-profit or minimum employee out like Obamacare has. In my view this is going to drastically change the game for most rep theatres that employee people for a whole season on a salaried basis.

So, how is your business/theatre dealing with this?

 

[porkchop]

Seems like for the purposes of non-profit theatre were employees are generally flexible on compensation and unlikely to be getting insurance, they could just go to a 1099 to avoid this particular issue. Where this might have a large effect for our industry is lower to mid tier touring companies that pay their employees a salary. I think I signed my first touring contract for something like $650 a week and averaged 50+ hours a week of work. I was told, and in later years repeated, "don't do the math for your hourly, you'll just get angry." I think busy tours for that particular company probably average above $913/wk these days for most employees, but I would expect this to still have some effect on future contracts,. Particularly for new hires that for some pink contracts come in at a much lower (like $200/wk lower) minimum base than even second year employees.

 

[SteveB]

I thought we had a discussion of this, but maybe not. Here's a link to an article in American Theater magazine that discussed this as well;

https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/08/30/what-price-overtime-theatre-workers-want-to-know/

Our facility is either Local One, so OT as established by a contract, or has staff, such as myself as well as 5 technical folks with our Theater Dept. all under a teachers union, so a contract, but no OT or comp time allowed, thus a rigid 35 hr. work rule.

In any event, we have been covered under the revised Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, but other then a now strict rule to not work more then 35 hrs. nothing changed.

 

[Footer]

Seems like for the purposes of non-profit theatre were employees are generally flexible on compensation and unlikely to be getting insurance, they could just go to a 1099 to avoid this particular issue.

Companies that do the 1099 thing are beginning to get fined for doing this in my area. There is a big crack down going on... radio ads, TV ads, and massive fines being sent out.

 

[MikeJ]

I think this happened quite a while ago, but maybe It din not go into effect right away. I think a lot of smaller and rep theaters are fine. In my experience people are paid a stipend or a very legitimate 1099 contract. You offer the TD $2500 to get the show built. They have a deadline, but pretty much work as much or as little as they need to to get the job done. That's the definition of an independent contractor.

This will stop someone from hiring a full time employee at a theater or production company, scheduling them for specific hours/days, and making them work 80hrs a week, for $25k a year. They still CAN pay 25k but must pay OT over 40 hours. There is a lot of abuse of salaried employees in the production industry, basically forcing them to be "on call" all of the time.

On the other hand people who make $45k might just get a $5,000 pay bump to avoid the OT requirement, not a bad or good thing depending on the job.

This should not affect people who are already paid hourly, or paid as a Day rate, such as freelance techs.

 

[MikeJ]

Liability wise, unless each contractor carries their own insurance equal to the companies policy, and you are paying THIER company for the work, It's a bad Idea to not have that person on payroll.