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Bush gets his way as workers lose overtime benefits

Date Posted: December 12 2003

Nothing can stop one of the most obnoxious rules affecting working people in U.S. history.

As many as eight million U.S. workers could be affected by the rule, which has been strongly pushed by President George Bush who is seeking to modernize U.S. labor law.

"What did middle-class Americans do to so anger this president that he is intent on punishing them by taking away their access to overtime pay?" asked Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.).

The rules, which could go into effect as early as this month, will allow employees who work more than 40 hours in a week to choose between premium pay or compensatory time off scheduled at a later date, both at the time-and-a-half hourly rate.

What's so bad about that?

Labor leaders say the current overtime law acts as a protection to the 40-hour work week because companies wanting more work from their employees now must provide premium pay. Organized labor also thinks that under the bill, employers will assign overtime only to workers who agree to choose comp time.

In addition, the legislation provides no meaningful protection that would prevent employers from requiring workers to take compensatory time off instead of receiving their salary. And, employers would also have the last word as to when employee comp time could be taken.

Organized labor thought it had this issue killed earlier this year, and in fact, both the U.S. House and the Senate inserted provisions in a massive funding bill this fall that banned the Labor Department from imposing the rules.

"Despite bipartisan congressional support to block overtime pay cuts sought by the White House, the Bush Administration strong-armed House and Senate leaders into removing" the ban from the money bill, said a statement by the AFL-CIO.

Most workers who toil under collective bargaining agreements aren't at risk of losing overtime - yet - but employers are expected to test the waters during negotiations in future years. And there is one argument that government workers who are unionized could automatically lose their rights to overtime pay because Bush's rule change effectively changes federal law.

Other workers classifications, like nurses and nonunion firefighters, have been cited as being at-risk for losing OT privileges because they could easily be re-classified by employers as being "supervisory" and thus ineligible for overtime pay but eligible for employer-imposed comp time.