silly overtime rules

I take no position on the Bush administration’s new rules on overtime. (For those who haven’t kept up, in essence, they make it easier for some workers to be classified as “creative professionals” or “learned professionals” and thus not eligible for mandatory overtime pay. If a worker is defined as a “professional” under the new regulations, his company can decide not to pay him overtime and require work weeks substantially longer than 40 hours.)
But I do object to unclear rules that make no sense.
Check out this 16-page PDF. It’s the summary, career field by career field, of the new rules that allow your company to determine whether or not you’re a “professional.” (It covers everything from insurance claims adjusters to dental hygienists to chefs to embalmers.) On page 8 (page 22666 of the Federal Register), we find the section on journalists:
Journalists may satisfy the duties requirements for the creative professional exemption if their primary duty is work requiring invention, imagination, originality or talent, as opposed to work which depends primarily on intelligence, diligence and accuracy.
Okay, so if your job as a journalist involves being talented, original, or imaginative, you’re a creative professional and not eligible for overtime. But if it requires you to be smart and accurate, you’re not. Apparently, these two sets of skills are opposed to one another, thus allowing a clear division of labor.
Everybody clear on that? The regulations continue:
Employees of newspapers, magazines, television and other media are not exempt creative professionals if they only collect, organize and record information that is routine or already public, or if they do not contribute a unique interpretation or analysis to a news product. Thus, for example, newspaper reporters who merely rewrite press releases or who write standard recounts of public information by gathering facts on routine community events are not exempt creative professionals.
Okay, so if I “write standard recounts” on “routine community events,” I can get overtime. But if I add something “unique,” I can’t. So if I attend a superintendent’s press conference and write a story about it, I get paid overtime, but if I ask him a question, I don’t? Or if my “recounts” of the “community events” aren’t quite “standard” enough? Perhaps if I write it all it capital letters, or avoid using commas? Or maybe if the event I’m covering is only questionably “routine”?
There’s more:
Reporters also do not qualify as exempt creative professionals if their work product is subject to substantial control by the employer.
Every reporter for every news organization in the world has an editor. That editor can decide not to publish your story. Or to cut out the last three paragraphs if space is tight in tomorrow’s paper. Or change your verb tense or kill an adjective or add a pronoun. That’s “substantial control by the employer,” isn’t it?
However, journalists may qualify as exempt creative professionals if their primary duty is performing on the air in radio, television or other electronic media; conducting investigative interviews; analyzing or interpreting public events; writing editorials, opinion columns or other commentary; or acting as a narrator or commentator.
Okay, so if my interviews are “investigative,” I’m a creative professional. But isn’t every reporter investigative? I mean, the whole point of being a reporter is to find out what happened somewhere and write about it. The lowliest reporter is at least as investigative as most private investigators. And “analyzing or interpreting public events”? What reporter doesn’t do that? Every action a reporter takes in working a story involves “analyzing” — from figuring out who to call or interview to determining what documents you need to request or what angle to take on a story.
So, to sum up, I’m not eligible for overtime because I have talent, use my imagination, analyze public events, and ask people questions seeking answers.
But I am eligible for overtime because I’m smart and diligent, try to be accurate, sometimes report public information or attend press conferences, and have an editor.
Phew, I’m glad we cleared that up.