Overtime or Overdemanding?

For how many of you is overtime a choice? Are you trying to meet a deadline? Do you need the extra money to make ends meet? How different then is overtime than when Pharoah demanded the Israelites make bricks without supplying straw: "You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall impose on them the same quota of bricks which they made before. You shall not reduce it” (Exodus 5:7–8). I propose raising the minimum hours a week one must work to qualify for overtime to 48 hours! Why? The Ten Commandments say: "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 5: 13 - 14). So, if you're working five days a week, eight hours a day, then you're not working six days a week! OK, maybe you take Sunday and work on a project for yourself - great! May you reap what you sow! However, if you're nor working six days, a week, then why get rewarded for working that sixth day (doing what you're supposed) to do at 1.5 times your hourly rate?

Suppose you work 60 hours a week. For the first 40 hours you earn 30 USD, and for the next 20 hours you earn 45 USD. During the first 40 hours you earned 1,200 USD and for the next 20 hours you earned 900 USD. All totaled 2,100 USD. However, from the perspective of the business, the employer could have gotten 70 hours of work between two employees were the first employee worked 40 hours, the second 30 and they each got paid 30 USD/hour!

Let's suppose you work 60 hours a week for 48 weeks a year at an hourly rate of 30 USD. In a year you'll earn 100, 800 USD and have a tax rate of 5%. Accordingly, you'll pay 5,040 USD in taxes. However, if the company employees to individuals who each work 48 weeks a year at an hourly rate of 30 USD. Then you will make 57, 600 USD for working 40 hours a week, and the second employee will earn 43,200 USD and have worked 30 hours a week over the course of 48 weeks. Maryland will in turn make, 2,736 USD and 2,052 USD, respectively from both employees.

How does this benefit Maryland? Well taxes support social services. The difference in taxes is 252 USD. So, the question becomes is that difference enough to support the unemployed individual in the near term, and in the longer term would it have been better had you invested the time you spend doing overtime elsewhere? Does the unemployed cost Maryland more in social services in the short term, and the employed more in the long-term, when the "burnout/retire" without enough wealth to support themselves independent of social services?

As Governor, I would seek to address this issue by raising the minimum hours a week one must work to qualify for overtime to 48 hours! The goal is two-fold. To encourage us to work six days a week; however, to discourage working overtime to make ends meet! If you must work overtime to make ends meet perhaps your being underpaid! If you must work overtime to meet a deadline, then perhaps the companies understaffed! Accordingly, your company may be acting like Pharoah overworking you and profiting off your work! Are you not a slave then? The Ten Commandments begin saying: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."