Re: Tech Writer Lawsuit

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

The OT pay itself does not.  The consequences that
will are that most companies will tell writers to go home
at quitting time with the admins and clerical staff rather
than pay it, and engineers seeing writers do this while
they are salaried employees with no OT will further 
reinforce the existing tendency to view writers as
nonprofessionals.

The real issue is a lack of parity between employees
whose work is of equivalent complexity and requires
equivalent education, experience and skills.  Writer
positions in a publications group I manage have 
education, training and experience requirements that 
are on a par with those of an engineer and their ranks
and salary grades are the as well.  I wouldn't be a 
publications manager for a company that saw its
technical publications group any differently; why 
would you want to be a writer for one?

Gene Kim-Eng




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ned Bedinger" <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
> The question is, how does OT pay amount to a problem
> in technical communications between engineers and us?
> Hhow does it follow that software engineers would
> treat us differently if we bill OT hours?
>
>Let's face it, tech writers have been in this
>position for a decade or more, we're not well
>informed about the laws, we haven't been insisting
>on OT pay and employers have been insisting they
>won't pay it.

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