Employers not paying overtime  Art Perlo’s article on “Getting
paid for overtime” (PWW, 5/1-6) was great.  I’ve been working as
a driver/helper in Pittsburgh’s retail floral industry for the
past 10 years or so. Flower shops are mostly family-owned and
controlled by owners who inherit the business from their
parents. Paying workers overtime pay is the one thing they seem
to dislike more than anything else in this tough business.
These folks seem willing to do almost anything to get around
paying OT. They’ll hire a Saturday driver, not so much to
provide a new job, but to prevent the weekday driver from
getting overtime hours. They’ll send a driver home early just
before a big flower holiday to keep his or her OT hours down for
that week.  One company got an exemption from paying OT to their
drivers, supposedly because the floral products come from South
America. Another owner was caught using a bimonthly pay
calculation to subtract OT hours from workers who were getting
paid every two weeks, instead of on th