Cross Post from r/maliciouscompliance:
I work a consulting engineer designing and implementing systems (network and server) upgrades for organizations with worldwide locations. When initially hired by my company the agreement was I would get paid for every hour I worked, usually 40 hours a week when at the home site, up to 80+ hours per week when at the customer's location. No overtime, just straight time as my position is “exempt”. While on-site I would also be paid MI&E (Lodging expenses, Mileage expenses, and Meal & Incidental Expenses) to include rental car. MI&E can add up to a couple thousand a week in places like Hawaii, Japan or England.
Flash forward a few years and the company has been bought and merged a couple of times and the new company decides that exempt employees are now salary and will not pay for any hours over 40 plus of course no discussion of negotiating a new rate due to the change in working conditions. This reduces my annual compensation by over 20K per year as I would be at a customer's site for 4-6 months a year. I walk into the bosses office to discuss, he says nothing to discuss.
Next time I go am planning for a site, the plan is only for me and my team to work 40 hours a week meaning an additional 3 weeks on site, neither the customer nor my boss were happy. The additional three weeks added over 50K in MI&E to the estimate because it isn't just me that does the work and the total number of chargeable hours is the same if we are on site 4 weeks or 7 weeks.
Sorry, if you only pay me for 40 hours I only work 40 hours. A couple of VPs were quickly brought into the conversation and the new policy was quickly modified, when at a customer site we now get paid for every hour we work.