Desperate times, desperate measures

The question of whether American drug reps are salespeople or robots is back to the Supreme Court.  If the suit is successful then the pharmaceutical industry will owe its (former) employees many millions of dollars in unpaid overtime.

This is a natural consequence of Big Pharma viciously downsizing its sales teams at the end of the blockbuster era.  The companies have no choice but to shed all these jobs but as the entire industry is contracting their laid-off employees can pursue this overtime claim with impunity.  There aren't enough new jobs emerging in the industry so there's no reward for not being labelled a troublemaker who went after this additional cash.  If you're not going to get another gig anyway you might as well try for whatever you can get?

Structural change.  Boy, I don't know...*

* With apologies to Aaron Sorkin