Tired of working for free ?

Overtime or TimeFunding ?

The thinking about TimeFunding opens on to a lot of subjects.
Today, let’s talk about overtime.

Since 2012, in France, overtime hours, supposing they are counted by the company, particularly concerning executives, have no longer been tax-free.

In other words, they are subject to social contributions and income tax for those who do them.

The advantages linked to defiscalization are over. The notion which had backed up the short slogan « Work more to earn more » is a thing of the past.

However, even between 2007 et 2012, overtime didn’t have much meaning for high-level executives, given the absence of clocking-on and the implicit ‘involvement’ which goes with the higher posts.

While a salaried employee’s contract stipulates that the maximum legal limit for the working week is 48h (except in exceptional circumstances) it is still common to see high and middle-level executives staying on in the office beyond the legal 10h a day and reaching astronomic numbers of uncounted hours (illegal because non convertible into rest days or bonuses).

And we speak of work « endured » because the overtime is by its very nature « imposed by the company » on the employee. Implicitly.

It is also « geo-endured » because it involves being physically present at the work-place. It can also come along with the traditional « take-home work » which kills off evening and week-end free time usually reserved for the family or socialization in the wider sense…

Lastly, an executive’s overtime has always had an astonishing status : it’s unpaid work !

Overtime, in the strict sense of how it works today in a company, is the expression of the enslavement of homo oeconomicus in the baby-boomer generation.

This is why, whether it be taxed or not, it is an abomination which must disappear.

But everything in its own time !

So first of all, what should we think about a way of externalizing overtime ? What should we think of TimeFunding as a way of getting back to the tax advantages of the old system of overtime (before 2012) at the same time adding the new advantages of « slashing » ?

Let’s widen the spectrum.

If you think that, in fine, TimeFunding is by nature destined to transform lent time into a capital investment, and not to be considered as work, and so, destined to be legally considered as invested capital and not as work, it is normal to consider that the tax laws applicable to this invested time should transform it into a kind of « tax-free overtime ».

If we consider that, sooner or later, highly qualified work will more and more be regarded as capital (cf Doctor Laurent Alexandre’s theories about the links between work and Artificial Intelligence), then today’s slasher, the apprentice TimeFunder, the time-lender, the “externaliser” of overtime, is no more than the avant-garde entrepreneur of our time, anticipating the highly qualified worker of the 2050's.

In that case, TimeFunding is a baby of its time, since it was born of disintermediation, platformization, process simplification, liberalization of knowledge, commercialization of trust … but it also draws a pretty clear picture of the present and future aspirations of people on the work market and a solid vision of its changes.

At the heart of this reflection, the questions of trusted third parties, insurance of time lent, taking and limiting risks, are corollaries to the setting-up of TimeFunding.

Besides, the central go-between tool for time-lenders and know-how-poor start-ups is finally destined to become highly technical : big data, algorithms, AI, cryptocurrency, Blockchain are subjects we will evoke soon in these columns, because they are vital to TimeFunding …

And when it is possible for anybody in the database to invest hours voluntarily, in all confidence, anywhere in the world, to rack up time convertible into hard cash or shares in expanding companies on top of his regular job, then the question of ‘overtime’ will have to be revised in companies which want to keep this work time.

As Professor Laurent Alexandre says, high quality work already tends to be rewarded in capital (stocks and shares, stock options, etc…) rather than in terms of salary, and this tendency will only grow when brought into contact with the new ways of making one’s know-how and competence available, in the absence of real frontiers for Capital.

While we are waiting for the advent of artificial intelligence and the upheaval in work habits which will undoubtedly, and come with it, and failing the ability to immediately play the role of disruptive switch to the present paradigm of the competence and employment market, let us look on TimeFunding as a knew way of doing overtime….

That would be something.

…………………

Nash

www.timefunding.fr