Proving that Corporate America's purse-strings are the same strings puppeting our government: Republicans take aim at the 40-hour work week Molly Ivins - Creators 04.24.03 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Boy, there is no shortage of creatively terrible ideas from the Republican Party these days. Those folks are just full of notions about how to make people's lives worse -- one horrible idea after another bursting out like popcorn -- and all of them with these sickeningly cute names attached to them. Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act (Senate version) and the Family Time Flexibility Act (House version). The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. To hear the Republicans tell it, you'd think these were family-friendly bills, something like Clinton's Family Leave Act, designed to help you balance the difficult combined demands of work and family. With such a smarm of butter over their visages do the Republicans go on about the joys of "flexibility" and "freedom of choice" that you would have to read the bills for maybe 30 seconds before figuring out they're about repealing the 40-hour workweek and ending overtime. As The American Prospect magazine notes, when Republicans talk about "flexibility," it means letting business do whatever it wants without standards, mandates or worker and consumer rights. Ever since FDR's New Deal, working overtime gets you time-and-a-half in money, which has the happy effect of holding the work week down to 40 hours -- or at least preventing it from ballooning grossly. The proposed Bush rules, which the two Republican bills codify and expand, would: -- Exclude previously protected workers who were entitled to overtime by reclassifying them as managers. Companies are already using this ploy where they can get away with it. Say you're frying burgers on the night shift at McDonald's, making overtime, and suddenly -- congratulations -- you're the assistant night manager, with no raise and no overtime. -- Eliminate certain middle-income workers from overtime protections by adding an income limit, above which workers no longer qualify for overtime. You like that? You make too much to earn overtime. -- Remove overtime protection from large numbers of workers in aerospace, defense, health care, high tech and other industries. Pay attention, this one is coming right out of your paycheck. Big Bidness is lobbying hard on these bills. If you work overtime to pay your bills, look out. The trick is, employers get to substitute comp time for overtime, and the employers get the right to decide when -- or even if -- a worker gets to take his or her comp time. The legislation provides no meaningful protection against employers requiring workers to take time off instead of cash and no protection against employers assigning overtime only to workers who agree to take time instead of cash. Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely? The proposed rules changes and the Republican bills provide a strong financial incentive for employers to lengthen the workweek, on top of an already staggering load. By 1999, in one decade, the average work year had expanded by 184 hours, according to Kevin Phillips' book "Wealth and Democracy." He writes, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical American works 350 hours more per year than the typical European, the equivalent of nine work weeks." The bills give employers a new right to delay paying any wages for overtime work for as long as 13 months. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, under the new bills an employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until more than a year later, at the employer's discretion. "Without receiving interest or security, the employees in essence lend their overtime pay to the employers in the hope of getting back some time later as paid time off," the report states. "Employees' overtime compensation is put at risk of loss in the event of business failure and closure, bankruptcy or fraud. Furthermore, employees get no guarantee of time off when they want or need it." The EPI explains why Big Bidness loves these bills: "A company with 200,000 FLSA-covered employees might get 160 free hours at $7 an hour from each of them (160 hours is the maximum allowed under the bills). That's the equivalent of $224 million that the company wouldn't have to pay its workers for up to a year after the worker has earned it. Considering that, under normal circumstances, the employer might have to pay 6 percent interest for a commercial loan of this magnitude, it could save $13 million by relying on comp time to 'borrow' from its employees instead." The slick marketing and smoke on this one are a wonder to behold. We're being told that private sector workers will get the same "benefit" of comp time as public employees. Wow, keen, except the government has no profit motive for pushing comp time instead of overtime. Boy, does this stink. © 2003 Creators Syndicate URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14890&CFID=6846242&CFTOKEN=64011512
i haven't read this proposed legislation...but why do i feel like there's probably another side to this story than the way Molly Ivins presented it?
Upon further review...this from the Business and Professional Women website: http://www.bpwusa.org/Content/Policy/FederalLegislation/FlexTime.htm Family Time Flexibility Act Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL) has introduced a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 called the Family Time Flexibility Act. This piece of legislation would allow an employee to receive, in lieu of monetary overtime compensation, compensatory time off at a rate not less than one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime compensation is required under the Act. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important features of the Family Time Flexibility Act: The Family Time Flexibility Act would allow employees to voluntarily receive paid time off instead of cash wages for overtime. In the legislation, compensatory time would accrue at a rate of one-and-one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for each hour worked over 40 within a seven day period. It would not affect the 40-hour workweek or the calculation of overtime. The legislation would prohibit the use of compensatory time agreements as a condition of employment and would allow employees to withdraw from a compensatory time agreement at any time. The Family Time Flexibility Act provides for a monetary "payout" of all unused compensatory time before the end of the calendar year. Why is the Family Time Flexibility Act needed? In 1969, approximately 38 percent of married women with children worked for pay, while in 2001, 68 percent did so. The reality of today's workforce is that both parents are working, or a single parent is balancing all of the household needs. The Family Time Flexibility Act is an important bill for working families who need compensatory time to fulfill family duties. The Family Time Flexibility Act would go a long way toward helping women-and men-- achieve work-life balance.
Overtime was used to fight off unemployment, not to give workers more money. The idea was that if you punished companies for having employees work overtime, the companies have to hire more employees so less work long hours. The problem was that the cost of overtime still wasn't enough to cause companies to reduce work hours and hire more employees. That is what backfired. Now companies had to spend more on their labor and costs rose for products, so while some employees got stronger buying power from overtime dollars, society's collective buying power was reduced because of the rise in the price in products because of the rise in price of labor. Another thing happened to compound the problem. Rather than reduce individual work force hours and force companies to hire more workers, workers actually wanted to work more hours and their unions fought for these hours and to keep the companies from hiring more people, so the whole reason for implementing overtime (to reduce unemployment) was actually compounded by workers choosing to work more hours and having their unions support that. People have now lost sight of the fact that overtime wasn't about worker's rights, but about lowering unemployment, but it was a flawed policy and it ended up failing at its intention...instead, it raised prices and lowered buying power for the whole nation, and actually compounded the problems of unemployment. So now workers made more, but spent more to live, so there was a zero trade off. All the while, unions made it harder for people to get hired because they supported keeping work forces small so the workers could get more overtime. Overall overtime has been a failed economic policy that did not work the way it was intended. All that crap being said, I don't know how much good it would do to get rid of overtime.
unless i'm reading it wrong, this doesn't get rid of overtime. it allows you to opt out for this approach, but your acceptance or rejection of these plans can not be a condition upon which you are hired or not. that's the fallacy of this entire coal mineresque argument...it's blowing it entirely out of proportion.
Based on what MadMax posted, how can this be seen as anything other than a good thing? 1. I can opt for time off or pay. 2. I can opt out of the "time-off" program whenever I want. 3. Being in or out of the "time-off" program cannot be used as a condition of employment. 4. At the end of the year, any unused "time-off" must be paid out in cash. What am I missing?
If this is true, then I have no problem with this policy, it sounds great.... ...and the title of this thread is dumb-tarded.
exactly...this is a great approach. some would love this type of approach...others don't need it. but it offers an alternative, as i see it. typical Molly Ivins. demonize the administration BEFORE getting the facts...or, worse...have the facts and distort them so you can demonize the administration.
I basically paid off my college debt thanks to unlimited overtime at Apache Corp. I had a crap $25K a year ($12 an hour) entry level IT job that after overtime ended up paying over $40K a year since I worked 60+ hours a week. And trust me, since it was contract and we had no 401K or insurance, I was happy to work those hours. Paid off my loans in a year.
What surprises me is how many kids think overtime is a benefit your job gives you... Overtime is not a benefit the way health care or a dental plan is... just a useless thought.... not really on topic...
Ditto the last remark here. I don't get paid time and a half anymore because I am an exempt employee or one on salary. However, I get the comp time and I love that. I have taking comp time recently and it helps tremendously in getting things done that you normally don't have time to do like getting your car worked on, doctor's appointments, and other things that you normally have to charge sick time or vacation time. It means a LOT to me not to have to burn up vacation. The author of this article sounds like someone who got passed over for a promotion or has an axe to grind with something.
What you posted here doesn't sound bad, MadMax, but I'll be interested in what the actual bill entails. My wife works for the State and racks up tons of comp time. She rarely gets to use all of it. After 2 years if you don't use it- you lose it, the way I understand it. That's with the State, but I don't know all the details of this bill. The devil can be in the details. I wouldn't dismiss out of hand what Ivins wrote about it. She has a style that must be very irritating to conservatives, but she's frequently on target. Molly may know something we don't. We'll find out eventually. For what it's worth, Manny, Molly Ivins has been writing about politics for years and years. She's a very funny speaker, whether you agree with her or not. She's really a hoot in person, if the opportunity ever comes up to see her. Molly lives in Travis Heights in Austin.
Molly Ivins is great. I met her a few years ago when she came to see the founder of my school after his wife had passed. He had come back to the school to teach to get his mind off of things and was the advisor for the school paper. I came in one night to let him look ever the next day's issue and guess who was there? apparently, Molly was a student of his when he taught English at St John's. She is awesome and I'm glad I got to meet her in person. The last I heard about her was that she was suffering from some kind of illness. Anybody know what happened with that?
I would be curious to know why businesses are very much in favor of this bill, if it is as pro-worker as many here believe. I haven't heard much about it, but I have heard that many worker-groups are opposed to it - I'd be curious to know why on that front as well. The one thing I have heard is that employers could use it to their benefit in the form of corporate culture. That is, you could work for the company either way, but promotions would be based on people who work overtime, and overtime would be offered only to those taking the comp time. The eligible times to take time off could then be controlled by the company as well. I'm not sure I believe that argument, but there's more to this than "this is great for families!"
It allows companies to keep more cash on hand. While the comp time would be considered a liabilty below the line, and would affect the bottom line exactly the same as overtime, comp time allows companies to maintain bigger cash reserves and have better cash flow. So the company gets a benefit, the employee gets a benefit...everybody wins.
I like Overtime Comp Time [That I cannot control when i take it] sucks How is it family friendly .. if my family and I cannot decide when to take it? Rocket River
ummmmm...you don't have to opt for comp time under this plan. you can stick with your overtime, if that's what you like.
