Salary employee, how many hrs/week?

binarysoul

How many hours (maximum) an employer can require a full-time employee to work in a week? Now I'm in Canada, so it may be similar to US.

In Canada in some provinces 44 hours is the maximum, but then the employer has to pay overtime.

darwinism

In america I dont think there is a maximum and they dont have to pay overtime if you are on salary.

JDMurray

In the USA, the employer determines what "full-time" and "part-time" is. To a salaried employer, full-time is usually the delineation where things like benefits and accrued vacation time begin. I've worked for employers that considered as little as 24hrs/week to be full time, and other that required at least 32hrs/week. There usually is no upper limit on unpaid overtime.

State and federal agencies will use a time designation, such as 8hrs/day or 40hrs/week, rather than the ambiguous terms "full-time" and "part-time." Only hourly wage earners are required by law to be given extra compensation for working more than 8hrs/day and 40hrs/week. The professional, salaried types are at the tender mercies of their employer. In such cases, if compensation is given at all, it's usually in the form of extra vacation days, or an enhanced consideration for a bonus or raise.

binarysoul

Interesting stuff, I worked full time, but hourly. But I'm hoping that just because I will be working on a salary, the employer doesn't regard that as a blank of time cheque to require me as many hours as they want, e.g. more than 40 hrs

Danman32

You might want to check with your labor bureau. I am sure there are some sort of limits and compensation. They can't expect you to work 24/7!

binarysoul

Correction

doesn't regard that as a blank of time cheque

should read "doesn't regard that a blank cheque of time."

I haven't had my morning coffee yet, so I made a mistake

binarysoul

They can't expect you to work 24/7!

Since you mentioned that, some jobs require you to be available to work 24/7, which I believe is very common. One employer told me that they need people to work from 12:00am-9:00am, including weekends and holidays. My wife would pack and leave if I tell her she will be alone all night, so this is very problematic.

Danman32

Available, yes. To actually work, no. There has to be a reasonable duty cycle. Human bodies cannot go without sleep, food, water and discharge.

blargoe

If you ever want to be a sysadmin you are expected to be on call 24/7. Not that you necessarily have to work an unfair number of hours, but you are expected to work until any critical issues are resolved if that's your area of responsibility.

Not sure what the law say.

JDMurray

binarysoul wrote:

They can't expect you to work 24/7!

Since you mentioned that, some jobs require you to be available to work 24/7, which I believe is very common.

They can't expect you to work continually 24/7, but you can certainlly be on call. I used to work as a developer for a medical software company. Members of the development team were expected to be available 24/7 in rotating shifts, each shift lasting one week. Every three weeks I carried a little red cell phone and laptop with me EVERYWHERE I WENT for seven days. And I could not be more than 15 minutes away from an Internet connection for my laptop in case online troubleshooting was needed. I only had to put up with that for about six months or so before I was redeployed by a company-wide reorg (thank goodness).

And how about being sent across the country to perform on-site customer service? That's a 24/7 impact on your life. The longest I've been on a customer's site is 17 days. And there was no compensation at all for my daily expenses or the disruption in my life. That was all just part of the job.

binarysoul

They can't expect you to work continually 24/7, but you can certainlly be on call.

I have no problem (although I don't desire it) with being on call on a rotating basis, but to work from 12am-9am shift, for example is not desirable as it messes one's sleeping cycle as once in a while they may ask you to work 9am-5pm. I read an article by Statistics Canada that said shift workers are more vulnerable to stress, sleep disorder and psychological problems and I'm concerned:

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020725/d020725b.htm