Overtime protection for millions is probably dead

When he won the Nov. 2 election, President George W. Bush said he had earned “political capital” and expected to use it to get his legislation adopted.

The president spent a little of that capital last month, and as a result, up to six million Americans, according to the AFL-CIO, will lose the ability to earn overtime after working 40 hours per week. The Bush Administration says far fewer U.S. workers will lose access to overtime.

On Nov. 17, Bush told Congress he would veto a $388 billion fiscal appropriations bill if lawmakers insisted on protecting workers’ overtime pay rights by including an overtime pay protection amendment. On Nov. 18, congressional Republicans got the message, and eliminated the overtime pay protection language, even though some GOP lawmakers voted with Democrats on six separate occasions in the past to save overtime pay.

Rep. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) pointed out that some of the six million workers who will lose their overtime pay protections, likely voted for Bush in the presidential election. “This is what happens when you vote that way,” he said after President Bush’s final veto threat killed his overtime pay protection amendment, putting what may be the final nail in the coffin.

Since the Bush administration announced in March 2003 that it would change overtime pay eligibility rules under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to take away overtime pay rights, workers sent more than 1.6 million e-mails, faxes and letters to Congress to protest the action, the AFL-CIO said.

“I am disappointed Republican leaders turned their backs on America’s workers,” said Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee). “Families are struggling to make ends meet, and taking away their overtime pay, which (can) amount to 25 percent of their annual income, will make that task all the more difficult.”

Bush’s new overtime plan actually went into effect in August, but Democrats in Congress had been attempting to get the new rule repealed. After Republicans declined to help veto the new rules last month, organized labor started talking about changing laws on the state level – a sure sign that the long fight to save overtime pay on the federal level is about over.

According to a study by Ross Eisenbrey of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, under the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act – which was overturned by Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress – most workers were guaranteed the right to overtime pay with time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked beyond the normal 40-hour work-week.

The changes in the Federal Labor Standards Act guarantee overtime pay to workers who earn less than $23,600 per year. However, the rules allow employers to deny or withdraw overtime pay from workers who earn between $23,600 and $100,000 and who are in the category of “administrative,” “professional,” and “executive.”

The problem for workers: Bush’s rules can be interpreted to expand the definitions of what job categories fit into those supervisory categories, “vastly increasing the number of exempt employees and making it likely that millions of them will work longer hours at reduced pay,” Eisenbrey said.

Workers like pre-school teachers, chefs, nurses and mortgage loan officers – who may technically have some supervisory capacity, are expected to be among the job classifications that will lose overtime eligibility, Eisenbrey said.

Bush’s Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said that the new rules are intended to increase clarity of the rules in order to reduce lawsuits – but the Economic Policy Institute cited three top non-partisan experts on the Fair Labor Standards Act, who said the new rules are so confusing and self-contradictory that they will provoke additional court litigation. They said virtually every change in the new regulations will weaken or eliminate the right to overtime pay.

Unionized employees working under a collective bargaining contract are exempt from the new rules. But Dr. Dale Belman, associate professor with Michigan State University’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations, said this autumn that the effects of the new rules will eventually filter down to union workers, especially foremen and supervisors.

“Nonunion workers will be affected first,” he said, “and that will create market pressure on the union side. Few employers are going to want to anger their employees by taking away overtime, but new employees will eventually be reclassified. The pressure on unions will increase gradually.”