My boyfriend hasn't been getting overtime and on-call pay for 25 YEARS!

A high-traffic thread on Reddit r/antiwork dated 2026-02-27 flagged "My boyfriend hasn't been getting overtime and on-call pay for 25 YEARS!" as a potentially underreported development in workplace governance and labor power. Participants described the pattern as follows: This is insane. He was led to believe that because he was a salary worker he wasn't due it. HOWEVER, he is a blue-collar, manual labor maintenance/water operator, making under $65,000 a year which makes him non-exempt! 25 years! I figured it out, it's estimate. Because this signal comes from community posts, it should be treated as allegation-grade evidence rather than a confirmed finding, but repeated details across independent commenters make it relevant for early monitoring. Background pressure has been building around headcount targets, opaque compensation bands, and manager-level quota pressure, which helps explain why this development is surfacing now rather than in earlier cycles. Why this matters: if the signal holds, the likely consequences include retention risk, legal exposure, and execution continuity over the next one to three quarters. Follow-up should focus on attrition spikes, labor complaints, internal memo leaks, and policy reversals to confirm whether this is a contained incident or the front edge of a broader systemic issue.