WASHINGTON – In a remarkable turn of events and a rare, major victory for organized labor, the U.S. Senate voted on May 4 to block implementation of President Bush’s plan to deny overtime pay to hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers.

A handful of Republicans voting with Democrats was sufficient to pass the measure, 52-47. The legislation now goes to the U.S. House, where it faces another Republican majority that could be lobbied into making a similar vote, which would finally kill Bush’s new rules. If the House doesn’t pass the measure, the rules will be written into federal Department of Labor guidelines in August.

“This was a very encouraging vote – a great victory for American workers and families,” said Iowa Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin, the amendment’s chief sponsor. “I think it’s a clear message to the administration.”

In pushing for the new rules, Bush has claimed that he wants to update federal labor law, which has language on the books that dates to the 1930s. Organized labor and Democrats have maintained that while making those updates, the president is taking the opportunity to deny overtime pay to hundreds of thousands of working Americans.

More than 80,000 public comments that flooded into the White House and Congress earlier this year helped water down the final rules. Originally, Bush’s proposal would have denied overtime to up to eight million American workers earning between $25,000 and $60,000 per year, forcing them to accept compensatory time off instead.

Bush’s final rules guarantee overtime to workers earning less than $23,660 per year. But those workers earning more than $100,000 per year – the vast majority white collar – would lose overtime protections. In between those salary ranges, there are still numerous gray areas about which occupations could lose access to overtime pay, although blue collar jobs are still not expected to be on the hit list. Workers who toil under collective bargaining pacts are not affected by the rules.

Last year, both the Senate and the House voted to kill the overtime rules, but Bush did a legislative end-around and put the rules back into place. Bush also managed to quash an attempt earlier this year in both houses that would have choked off funding for the new rules.

“The vote illustrated continued nervousness in (the Republican Party) about the wage issue,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Mr. Bush still has the power to implement the overtime rules as planned in August. But yesterday’s Senate outcome adds to the pressure on the House to join in the opposition and all but insures repeated skirmishes through the November elections.”

Said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota): “We have said from the beginning that nobody should be adversely affected by the changes made in the Department of Labor on overtime – nobody should be.”