Zapping the Fair Labor Standards Act

There’s a super-sized question floating around L&E blawgs right now, posed by Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com, that goes something like this:

If you could press a button and instantly vaporize one sector of employment law, what would it be?

Walter, in an article on Reason.com about promoting job growth, picked age discrimination. I, for one, want to be on Jon Hyman‘s superhero team.

Jon picked the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Jon’s reason was that it is essentially actually impossible to be in full compliance with the hedge-maze of regulations set up under the FLSA. He’s right, of course, but like all superheroes, my reasons for doing away with our shared nemesis are my own.

I think the FLSA is one of the most outdated laws in the Federal Lexicon. It’s not surprising. By my count, the way Americans think of work has fundamentally shifted at least three times since I was born. The FLSA – a law whose sole purpose is to protect the American workforce – is almost 80 years old. That’s where all those byzantine regulations came from. Some really smart businessperson came up with a new way to interact with their employees, and the FLSA people had to figure out what the FLSA said about whatever that novel idea was. So they jury rigged the old law to fit the new system of work – cramming workers into classifications that didn’t really fit.  Multiply that by every innovative workforce procedure for the past 80 years, and you can understand why employers feel so squeezed.

Now, we’ve got news articles and pundits galore telling us that the future is an independent workforce – full of freelancers and mobile offices and microdistributors – and we’re still going to try and use this 1930′s regulatory model? That is a crisis that needs heroes.

Now where did I leave that spandex?

WTFriday Diversion #2 – Procreate at Your Own Risk

[sigh] The best laid plans… So, apparently WTFriday is a pretty common thing on the internet. Oh, well, different names for the same thing. On we go…

This week’s phenomenal diversion from the boring part of L&E comes from the equally-phenomenal Employer Handbook Blog by Eric Meyer. And, in keeping with this week’s theme, it comes from the Land Down Under.

Here’s the headline:

Woman hurt during hotel sex sues…her employer.

Thaaat’s right. What do they say about business trips? Once you’re out of your area code… it’s your boss’s fault? Her boss – which, fantastically, was some part of the Australian government, paid for the room. Here’s the reasoning behind the, um, ballsy claim:

The employee’s attorney argued, to no avail, that being injured while having sex “during an interval or interlude within an overall period or episode of work” was no different than being hurt doing other recreational activities.

You know, like showering or brushing your teeth. Guess how well that went over.

Check out Eric’s blog for the rest.

The Sordid Tale of L.A. Noire – What’s a Tech Startup to Do?

I got a challenge from my brother Dan the other day to write a blog post about this story about working conditions at Team Bondi, the software developer behind the hit video game LA Noire. Turns out even at 30, I can’t turn down a double-dog-dare from my big brother, so I dug in.

The Backstory

Team Bondi is a software development company founded in 2005 for the express purpose of making LA Noire. While 2005 doesn’t seem that long ago in actual “regular person” time, in video game land, seven years is a lifetime. The fact that LA Noire took seven years to make means that, when it started, the Xbox 360 was just rolling off the assembly line, and the Wii and Playstation 3 wouldn’t hit shelves for another 6 months at least. I have it on good authority that for video gamers, that means 2005 was a long frigging time ago.

When LA Noire finally did come out this year, it was to rave reviews, and some glaring criticism: first, some of the developers who worked on it over the years noticed their names were missing from the credits. This sparked an online grumble, which erupted last month into allegations by anonymous former Bondi employees of “sweat shop” like working conditions, including a never-ending, near-obligatory “crunch” – which means “overtime work” in either British or techie slang. Still not sure which.

The allegations were detailed in online news reports by IGN and Develop, so I won’t bore you with the details. Here’s the quick and dirty:

• Workloads averaged about 60 hours per week, and spiked to 110 hours when milestones had to be met.
• The crunch never stopped – management promised that, once a deadline was met, things would ease up, but the goalposts kept moving, and the expectations of weekends and overtime just became a constant.
• Masses of employees, with estimates ranging from 45 to well over 100, either walked out or were fired over the seven-year project.

On top of the conditions, Bondi founder Brendan McNamara was obviously tough. He made “unreasonable” demands of project groups and would bypass and ignore team leads if they questioned him. Former Bondi employees have called the working conditions “inhuman.”

McNamara’s response has been unapologetic, to say the least. From IGN:

“We all work the same hours,” he told us. “People don’t work any longer hours than I do. I don’t turn up at 9am and go home at 5pm, and go to the beach. I’m here at the same hours as everybody else is. We’re making stuff that’s never been made before,” he asserted. “We’re making a type of game that’s never been made before. We’re making it with new people, and new technology. People who’re committed to put in whatever hours they think they need to.”

Like I said, tough. Well, his toughness may come at a price. The International Game Development Association has announced an investigation into working conditions at the company. Here’s my takeaway:

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