No More Overtime for Typesetters

Written by Joshua Lurie-Terrell on August 23, 2004

Those few of you who are lucky enough to work for employers who pay hourly overtime will no longer be paid at a higher rate for those additional hours.

Rule 6: Employees whose job requires imagination, invention, originality, or artistic or creative endeavors are not eligible for overtime.

I don’t usually post much political content here, nor do I encourage it, but this seems to be bad news for many folks working in the graphic arts (especially the huge volume of low-paid typesetters, commercial layout artists, production people and photo retouchers who, for many of us working as ADs and graphic designers, remain often and unfortunately off our radar), and — as far as I can tell — removes one of the largest incentives for job creation.

16 Comments

  1. jlt says:

    Excellent and continuing discussion of the new overtime rules, and their applicability to creatives, in the comments at this Metafilter post.

  2. Dan Reynolds says:

    I guess that this is one more reason to be happy that I am no longer living in the US. Two years ago, I worked for an in-house design department of a consculting agency in DC, the overtime that I worked was so much that it added over $10,000 to my annual salaryďż˝ that would only have been about $6,000 to $7,000 under the new rulesďż˝ glad I don’t work there anymore. This makes me sad.

  3. Yeah man, totally!!! I’m, like, so tired of being hassled by the man. Aren’t corporations totally evil? Why does the USA have to suck so bad?

    Whoops — sorry about that. USA Today always triggers activity in my Dorm-Room Discussion Lobe.

    “These new rules” are not rules at all: employers are free to be as generous or as stingy as their consciences may dictate, and their employees will stand. It’s ridiculous to review the compensation packages of professionals using the same metrics as hourly wage-earners. Most salaried graphic designers do not receive overtime. I do not receive overtime. The President of the United States does not receive overtime, but perhaps he doesn’t put in the hours, either.

    What designers are entitled to receive — and should look for — are good salaries, paid vacations, health care benefits, performance-based raises and bonuses, and participation in whatever retirement or profit-sharing programs have been established by their employers. We at H&FJ wouldn’t think of interviewing a prospective typeface designer without being prepared to discuss these benefits, and I’d encourage every designer out there to evaluate prospective jobs in terms of these kinds of well-rounded compensation packages.

  4. I hear you, Jonathan. Best to be responsible and take care of yourself as a worker. But isn’t there a chance these new standards will reduce the number of employers willing to offer decent packages? This seems like a trend-setter to me.

  5. jlt says:

    I’ve spent most of my career in job shops and ad agencies, not design consultancies, and I can tell you from experience that folks who need to eat and feed their kids (or those of us who may be “underexperienced”) will take what is available, and no amount of gaming the market will keep some folks from getting screwed. I agree with Jon that those of us who can should — but at the same time, there are a hell of a lot at the bottom who can’t and won’t and will get screwed for it.

  6. John Morse says:

    At least, thank the good Lord, we have jobs that require imagination, invention, originality, or artistic or creative endeavors. Hard to think of a job that doesn’t, and if I could, it would depress me just to think about it.

  7. Hrant says:

    > employers are free to be as generous or
    > as stingy as their consciences may dictate

    But it’s still possible (in fact it’s standard practice) for a government to encourage or discourage abusive policies (explicitly or even implicitly). The same way that an African nation can subsidize arms purchaces to groups who carry out pogroms, a Western country can skew the behavior of companies to strike down a certain a group of people. “By the people, for the people”? My ass, twice.

    hhp

  8. I’m not defending the FairPay program — I don’t know much about it; what I do know, I don’t like. But it’s incorrect (and irresponsible) for USA Today to characterize this program as “these new rules for overtime pay.” This is one set of guidelines that’s being (ruthlessly) rolled back for one segment of the population, which doesn’t really have much overlap with design professionals, if you read the fine print.

    Because, as Joshua points out, plenty of design professionals are getting screwed even without these laws. How many designers are retained as “permanent freelancers” (with no benefits), or work for companies that pay them off the books? These are real problems, which hurt everyone.

    For more information, see The Department of Labor’s web site. Those of you who are in the United States may also want to talk to your local chapter of the AIGA. (And make sure you vote this November!)

  9. Jacques Le Bailly says:

    I have never worked in the United States, hell I have even never been there, but I was wondering how much you can earn there monthly as a designer ?

    I now live in Holland, where you can certainly make a (normal) living as a designer. But here someone who has an average study and starts working as some kind of manager earns already more than a designer with several years of experience, although the designer’s responsabilities are far more important !

    Is this also the case in the US ?

    Regards
    —Jacques

  10. Dan Reynolds says:

    Well, Jacques, I can tell you that working as I designer is not really all that different in the US than in Europe, IMHO.

    There is no “standard” status of employment for graphic designers, either on the continent, or in the US.

    I graduated from college in the US in 2001. Alot of the graphic designers in the classes of 1999 and 2000 from RISD got high paying jobs in ecommerce: steady, regular, employment, with good benefits. These jobs lasted about six months, then the bubble burst. My compatriots and I were a bit dis-illusioned during our last semester. I went to Europe for 8 months to study for a semester in Germany on a small scholarship, instead of looking for a job directly. When I came back, I looked around DC for a few months before landing a freelance gig. This had no benefits. But I got lucky, and the company took me full time after two months, giving me full benefits and decent starting pay for a 22 year old professional in DC.

    So, one can get lucky in US, in terms of pay and benefits. These vary greatly from city to city. A lot of designers work as freelancers, and many of the younger freelancers are unfortunately abused.

    Now I’m living, studying, and working in Germany again. Things are not comparatively better here, or comparatively worse. Germany has Europe’s richest economy, but that hasn’t saved them from almost 11% percent unempolyment. Students also tend to graduate from college much later hereďż˝ between 25 and 30. Then they try to find full time jobs (which I think by law must include benefits hereďż˝ socialism and such). Some of them find jobs, but right now a large percentage of them do not. So they work as freelancers. As freelancers, they have no benefits, and have to pay all health insurance premiums out of pocket, even though Germany is supposed to have some sort of universal health care coverage. Some of these freelancers don’t make enough money to make ends meet. In this, they have one advantage over American workersďż˝ they can get funding automatically from the government for a year, since they are technically running their own businesses. But after that, no more moeny, except for welfare. And no one wants that, because it has a stigma attached.

    The levels of pay for full time designers in Germany run the same gamut that I was used to in DC and New England (better this moment actually, because of the weak dollar’s effect on the exchange rate) Freelance work is trickier. Some people have better luck everywhere than othersďż˝ and there never seem to be enough jobs to go around so that everyone is happy. This is just my story and my experience. Some people on this board have had better experiences, some have had worse.

  11. Dan Reynolds says:

    Oh, Jacques, America is totally the same as Holland in regards to managers making more money. In coporations, everyone makes more money than the graphic designs, even as (in my experiences) the designers were making enough.

    This is probably the case everywhere, because certain skills are more valued by business than others.

  12. Jacques Le Bailly says:

    Hi Dan,
    thanks for the explanation. Where did you study in Germany ? I lived and worked four years in Berlin.

    —Jacques

  13. Dan Reynolds says:

    I live in Wiesbaden, study at the Hochschule f�r Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main, and work at Linotype (as an intern).

    To see what Offenbach’s type designers are up to, check out http://www.typeoff.de (sorry, still just in German for the moment)

  14. Jacques Le Bailly says:

    Hi Dan,
    this is funny. Before going to Berlin, I was an exchange student in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt. During and after that semester I also worked for Linotype !

    Please greet Thomas, Bernhard, Abbi, Otmar and Mr. Steiner for me !

    ;-)

    Regards,
    —Jacques

  15. zander says:

    never ever been payed overtime for my extra hours in the 6 years i’ve been working this business. it’s always been the hours you put in to get the better jobs and the bigger title/salery.

    as for political content, there too little of it around. it’s like people go around brainwashed into thinking that politics are not to be discussed because everybody else is irrational.. or something..

  16. New to this community. What is the source of these “rules?”

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