[coolestuk]

"I feel like that person should be reported to the authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly work over 40hrs/week should be illegal."

My husband is a low-grade chef. The vast majority of places where he worked/interviewed expected him to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week (sometimes 6.5 days - those employers thought someone only working 6 hours on the 7th day was being treated well).

And bear in mind people like him are working these very long hours under time-pressure, with people barking orders at them; they are using sharp knives, boiling water, boiling fat.

Quite often, the employers kept all tips/service charges. If the staff did get tips/service charges, they went to waiting staff/bar staff.

Only about 5% of the places where he was interviewed did he get offered a 40 hour week, with some of the tips/service charges going to him.

Oh yeah. And all this on minimum wage. Hours worked beyond 40 were never paid as overtime in these places.

He was working in the kinds of restaurants were programmers and other professionals would go for dinner.

He spent the last 3 months living off his savings until he could get a job at one of the 5% of places that operated the kind of working hours that everyone else takes for granted.

[smtddr]

>>where he worked/interviewed expected him to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week (sometimes 6.5 days - those employers thought someone only working 6 hours on the 7th day was being treated well). And bear in mind people like him are working these very long hours under time-pressure, with people barking orders at them; they are using sharp knives, boiling water, boiling fat.

Okay, good for him. But I stand firmly by what I said, that should be illegal.

>>the kind of working hours that everyone else takes for granted.

I assume you mean 40hrs/week. When I hear someone say "take for granted" to describe something, I believe they consider that something a luxury. If 40hrs/week is a luxury, then what do we consider normal? I'm not accepting some 3rd-world sweatshop, or even 1st-world Amazon shipping facilities as normal... or even what your husband went through as normal. Nobody should have to live like that.

[Retric]

If your making minimum wage in the US they are required by law to pay you 1.5x overtime after 40 hours. Which is why many low wage jobs push people out the door at 40 hours. Granted, recovering that money can be a pain but it's vary doable.

http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/minwage.htm : http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs23.pdf

Unless specifically exempted, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay.

[humanrebar]

> Unless specifically exempted

That's a pretty huge loophole. For example, certain kinds of kitchen staff in hotels and resorts are not required to be paid anything after the first 40 hours of regular pay.

The list of exemptions is ludicrously long and specific. There are exemptions for employees like movie theaters ushers and news announcers, for example.

[hga]

I believe the distinction is between "exempt" (not due overtime) and "nonexempt" employees. From the US Department of Labor (http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/overtime/jobs.htm):

"Chef - may be responsible for all food service operations and also may supervise the many kitchens of a hotel, restaurant group or corporate dining operation. A chef de cuisine reports to an executive chef and is responsible for the daily operations of a single kitchen. A sous chef, or sub chef, is the second-in-command and runs the kitchen in the absence of the chef. For assistance in determining whether an employee who performs managerial duties or functions in addition to his or her chef work meets the duties tests for exemption from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime pay requirements, begin with the Executive Employee section. For assistance in determining whether an employee who has attained a four-year specialized academic degree in a culinary arts program and who performs these or similar duties is entitled to overtime pay, begin with the Professional Employee section, and select the learned category. The professional exemption is not available, however, to cooks who perform predominantly routine mental, manual, mechanical or physical work."

You also can't dock pay by the minute or hour, only by the day.

[PeterisP]

In general, workers have achieved 5-day work week for almost a century and the conditions you describe fit a third-world sweatshop. Maybe it's time for USA to stop being a third-world sweatshop for so many its citizens - take a look at the Fair Labor Standards Act you had in 1938, maybe you can try to achieve at least that standard if you pressure your congressmen enough.

[eli_gottlieb]

So basically, you're saying that your husband was abused to hell and back, and implying that the authorities should indeed be cracking down, starting with the more severe abuses in lower-paid, lower-demand professions?