Programmer exemption

On February 3, 1971 a hearing was conducted by the U. S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division to examine whether the various data processing occupations should or should not be exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Among those testifying at the hearing was Walter M. Carlson (1), President of The Association for Computing Machinery. Carlson focused his discussion on programmers. In a later speech (2) Carlson challenged the Special Interest Group on Computer Personnel Research to conduct research which would provide better information for making the exempt/non-exempt decision for programmers. This report is one response to that challenge.