Unbelievable. How can you exempt support staff such as DBAs and network staff when a lot of their work by its nature has to be done outside of normal working hours?

sounds like one of your lovely politicians needs to butter up big business by kicking employees.

It could be a try-on, raise the idea see what the reaction is, so I suggest you react to it.

Salaried employees should be compensated for out of hours work. Executives get their compensation up-front but probably see working long hours as making a sacrifice for the company, expecting employees to do the same is reverse envy or a cost cutting exercise.