Posted on 06/03/2003 10:15:31 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
What is President Bush doing with the popular support he has received from the victory in Baghdad? First, he pushed through his tax cuts that gave over one-fourth of the benefits to millionaires even while schools are laying off teachers and shutting down after-school programs. Now he is after your paycheck and your weekend.
In March, the Bush administration proposed administrative changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Bush's ''technical changes'' will deprive millions of workers of overtime pay.
Call it an employer's bill of plunder. Bush's proposal would exclude workers previously protected under the act by allowing employers to classify them as ''managers'' or administrative and professional employees who are not eligible for overtime. Serving the customers at Wal-Mart, you're a manager, not an employee. Forget about the 40-hour week.
The president also would make those earning more than $65,000 a year ineligible for overtime protections. Republicans always ask what do Democrats mean by ''the rich.'' Well, now we know what Republicans mean--anyone earning over $65,000 is too ''rich'' for overtime pay.
And the president would strip overtime protection from large numbers of workers in aerospace, defense, health care, high-tech and other industries. During the war, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens suggested that New York's cops and firefighters should work overtime without pay as a wartime sacrifice. ''I don't know why the people working for the cities and counties ought to be paid overtime when they're responding to matters of national security,'' he said. The president has applied that principle to workers in critical industries.
But Bush's congressional partners, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, are pushing for more. This week, they'll vote on legislation that would allow employers to give workers ''time off'' rather than pay them time and a half for overtime. They paint it as a family-friendly measure, designed to help working parents by rewarding them with time off rather than pay. Whenever Frist and DeLay start talking about family-friendly measures, you all should hold onto your wallets.
In fact, the bills give the employer the control over when--and even if--a worker is allowed to use comp time. The bills do not have any protection against employers who require workers to accept comp time, rather than cash, or sanctions against employers who assign overtime only to those willing to take time off instead of cash. And in the Senate bill, the 40-hour work week is eliminated for an 80-hour two-week work period. If you are required to work 50 hours one week and 30 the next, you don't get overtime pay--you're just working 80 hours over two weeks.
For employers, this is a bonanza. You demand that workers work overtime. You don't have to pay them anything. Their projected compensation goes into a corporate time bank. When orders slow down, the employer tells you to take your comp time. If business is brisk and you want to take the time, the employer can refuse. You've essentially given the employer a tax-free loan for the pay that you have not gotten.
The Economic Policy Institute analyzed the Republican bills (HR 1119 and S 317) and concluded: ''There is nothing in the bill for workers except rhetoric and slick marketing. Not only will employees who substitute comp time earn less, so will employees who refuse comp time and insist on being paid. . . . Employers will assign overtime preferentially to those who accept comp time, thereby depriving the workers who need the extra cash of overtime work.''
Everyone knows this is the CEO administration that has perfected crony capitalism: an energy plan for and by big oil, a prescription drug plan for and by the drug companies, an environmental policy by and for the polluters' lobby. But this is ridiculous. Taking away the weekend and overtime pay in the name of ''flexibility'' may be good marketing, but it isn't good policy. In this minefield, it is clear who gets the gold and who gets the shaft.
e-mail: jjackson@rainbowpush.org
Personally, I'd kill to get the 80 hours per two week plan. I haven't been paid OT since '82 or comp time since '87 and most of the people I know have never worked a regular 40-hour work week, usually quite a few more hours.
Of course, we know that Rev. Jackson has never worked a regular week either but that's a whole other story.
Anything written by Jesse should be labeled under Humor. The man has zero credibility whatsoever.
Jesse, the STATES lay off teachers, not the US government. Oh, and what about that $51 billion in state aid that was part of the tax cut? Why are the states not using that to keep teachers on payroll? Guess that's a bit convenient to overlook, huh?
And what's with all this complaining about overtime, Jesse? It's not like you ever put in 40 hours of honest work in your life!
I had a statistics prof my Sophomore year who said that anyone could make statistics say anything they wished.
"It's all a matter of defining -- or NOT defining the terms of the stats you're discussing..."
Next he'll be after your pork and beans.
Why not just claim that Bush intends to kill us all and be done with it?
To reduce unemployment, simply cut the work week to 32 hours. Of course the company must still pay the worker the same as he was making for 40 hours work. The company must then hire an additional employee for every 4 employees that it had. Viola! The unemployment problem is solved! NOT...last I checked, their unemployment was even higher now.
I worked in retail for 14 years, worked off the clock for the first two years in order to get an early promotion (that practice is illegal now, but I was the youngest asst. manager that the company ever had). Got the promotion and and was able to work 60-80 hours EVERY week after that and only got paid for 40. The bonus plan was good, but they started cutting it until it was no longer worth the hours so I left. In other words, if anyone feels like they are being screwed, then it is time for them to change jobs, not laws.
Your premise is what is weak. The purpose of economic policy is not to favor either employer or employee, it is to increase total wealth. First, productivity begins to drop with increasing number of hours worked. Second, you omit TAXES from your analysis, which was a large fraction of my contention that hiring more people will reduce unemployment costs more than the loss of higher income taxes on marginal overtime pay. No, this is the worst of both from several perspectives: tax revenue drops on the lower pay, the employable people remain on the rolls where overtime costs might have motivated new hires, and the workers get less for more hours which pushes costs for managing their lives even higher.
Most people operate their lives dealing with a set of fairly fixed costs: housing, transportation, insurance, daycare, food, etc. Changing any one of these is a very big impact and if there is a drop in income there will have to be adjustments that could hurt small business more than anybody. I can envision an impact of this law where people will quit a job where they currently work overtime to take a second job instead, because their fixed cash flow cannot sustain the impact of the loss of overtime pay. I don't suppose you've paid the penalties for evening daycare. Try paying $40-60 an hour for a service when forced to work that extra hour for another $20.
There is a distinction between small businesses, where hiring one additional employee is a very big deal, and larger concerns where the marginal cost of one person is not a large percentage of their total personnel cost. This measure may be of some benefit to small business.
I also note in your "analysis" that you don't break down the cost of new hires into fixed and variable costs, or marginal overhead, where you do have a legitimate point. Most of the "Communism" in controlling employment policy lies there in policies mandating employee benefits and payroll taxes.
Finally, I would argue that causing families to have virtually no time together induces a social cost that produces less productive workers over successive generations. That's what this measure will abet.
If all you were arguing for (despite your totally single-sided view) were flexibility of labor hours, I would have less opposition to that, but that's not what this proposal is.
You can pretend that; in fact, you have NO IDEA what I would prefer. This is a question of the wisdom of a single change in policy asuming that all other factors remain the same. My conclusions would be very different for example, if there was no system of mandated employee benefits, payroll taxes, or unemployment insurance.
I worked in retail for 14 years, worked off the clock for the first two years in order to get an early promotion (that practice is illegal now, but I was the youngest asst. manager that the company ever had). Got the promotion and and was able to work 60-80 hours EVERY week after that and only got paid for 40. The bonus plan was good, but they started cutting it until it was no longer worth the hours so I left. In other words, if anyone feels like they are being screwed, then it is time for them to change jobs, not laws.
Wonderful story; you got screwed. Too bad your case doesn't apply to the employee pool in question. Hourly workers don't get bounuses for productivity, particularly if they are forced to be part of a union. This is an issue about hourly workers.
I hope you are being obtuse by design, but if not: I was an hourly employee. Not happy to be an hourly employee, I worked my out of the situation and into management. I would suggest that anyone that doesn't like they way they are treated to work to improve their station, not depend on the government to do it for them.
I never felt that anyone was screwing me other than myself and when I felt that way, I changed careers. That is what I would expect any employee to do.
And please explain to me exactly what the change in policy is since there have always been exempt and non-exempt employees. The only change is that the amount of money that the employee must receive in order to be exempt has been greatly increased.
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