WASHINGTON - A strong push by organized labor won over a handful of Republican senators on Sept. 10, who voted with Democrats to bar the Bush Administration from issuing new overtime rules that would be detrimental to millions of American workers.

The Senate voted 54-45 to block the overtime rules, setting up forced negotiations with House lawmakers, who narrowly passed the bill in July.

Sen. Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa), who led the effort to overturn the proposed rules, said the Department of Labor had acted in a "very heavy-handed manner" in crafting a proposal that would "wipe away the overtime protections" enjoyed by millions.

Workers who earn more than $65,000 per year in a number of occupations are most vulnerable to losing their right to overtime pay. With President Bush's blessing, the Labor Department's plan would update job classifications and make up to six million workers ineligible for overtime pay early next year, getting that time paid as straight time.

Six Republicans voted with Democrats to block the rules, which would become effective early next year with Congressional approval.

The issue is very complex. The Bush Administration defends the regulations as a step forward from decades-old wage rules that no longer protect lower-income white-collar workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the salary under which all white-collar workers are assured overtime pay would be raised from $155 to $425 per week, or $22,100 per year. The government said that extends wage protections to 1.3 million workers.

But, a new salary test would be imposed - $65,000/year - above which Democrats and organized labor says workers are vulnerable to losing protections.

Between the $22,100 and $65,000 wage limits is the battleground area: the Bush Administration has proposed new "duties" tests to define whether a worker meets certain administrative, professional or executive criteria. If workers can meet those tests - and employers will have some latitude in deciding how to categorize a worker - then they can be made ineligible for overtime pay.

For example, the Bush proposal would allow hospitals to impose the new rules on nurses, and call them "administrators" because they might have the authority to tell an orderly to change a bedpan. The rules could be applied across a spectrum of job descriptions. For jobs that are under collective bargaining agreements, the new rules would be subject to negotiations.

The business community says nowhere near six million workers would be affected, and that the new rules are needed to spell out murky job rules and the application of federal law in the U.S. workplace.

Organized labor and their friends in Congress wouldn't mind seeing new rules passed, either, but not these.

"Let's say the real number (affected by the new rules) is between 500,000 and 1.5 million who may have their overtime taken away," said Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee Chairman Jim Gregg , a Republican senator who opposed this measure. "You just can't change their lives with the stroke of a pen, in my opinion, because overtime is critical."