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Latest vote on OT hands labor a win

Date Posted: October 17 2003

In a win for the nation's workers, the U.S. House on Oct. 2 defeated President Bush's efforts to make changes to federal labor law that would have made up to eight million workers ineligible for overtime pay.

The House voted 221-203 to reject any changes in federal overtime provisions. The vote lined up with a similar vote by the Senate last month.

This fight isn't over, however. President Bush, who has argued that the current rules are outdated, has said he would veto the Labor Department's budget for the current fiscal year if Congress blocked the changes. The House and Senate must iron out their differences in the Labor Department's budget, and whatever they decide could still allow the new rules to go into effect.

"Both houses of Congress have now spoken - and they have directed President Bush not to take away overtime pay from working families," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

The House vote reflected a change by a number of Republicans on the bill, who are said to be feeling some pressure on the matter from voters in their district. In July, the House voted 213-210 to approve the new overtime rules.

"The Republicans are in survival mode," Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee, told theWall Street Journal. "They are afraid to go home and tell people they cut their wages."

The resolution was also opposed by that committee's chairman, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, who said passage of the measure would only add to confusion and more litigation over interpretation of the law.

According to the Journal, Bush's proposal would raise the wage threshold for mandatory overtime pay, allowing about 1.3 million people who earn less than $22,100 per year to qualify. But the changes would also make it easier for employers to classify workers as professionals or supervisors, removing their eligibility for overtime.

Workers under a collective bargaining agreement would not immediately be affected by Bush's rules. But according to the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, up to eight million employees in a myriad or industries, from broadcast technicians to firefighters to nurses, could be called "supervisors" or a similar designation by their employers and thus be made ineligible for overtime.