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Congress Backs Overtime Rights Despite Bush Threats
The U.S. House and a powerful Senate committee dealt a sharp blow to the Bush administration in September, voting to reverse new rules that could strip millions of workers of their right to overtime pay.
The votes came within a week of each other, less than a month after the changes took effect Aug. 23. In the House, 22 Republicans joined Democrats to vote 223-195 against the rules. Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania - who has opposed the rules from the beginning - joined 14 Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee in opposition.
The votes came on an amendment to the $142 million bill funding labor, education and health and human services. Republican House and Senate leaders are expected to try to keep the amendment out of the final version of the bill, which President Bush has threatened to veto if the language protecting workers' rights is included.
"Could the president's contempt for workers possibly be any clearer?" CWA President Morton Bahr said. "He's actually willing to kill a critical funding bill in order to ensure that workers no longer have a right to overtime pay."
The day the rules took effect, CWA members were among several hundred unionists who protested in front of the U.S. Department of Labor - a building one activist denounced as "the scene of the crime."
Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, who sponsored Senate legislation over the past year to try to stop the rules, said Aug. 23 would be remembered as "a national day of shame for the Bush administration. This is their 'anti-Labor Day.' The stealth attack on the 40-hour workweek has begun in earnest."
By giving employers the right to reclassify many workers as administrators, executives or "learned professionals," economists project the new rules could cost at least 6 million people their right to overtime pay. The rules are the most sweeping changes ever to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the 40-hour workweek and required employers to pay time and a half for extra hours.
On average, workers who get overtime earn an extra $161 a week, money that workers who spoke at the rally said helped them pay bills and put children through college. Now they could be forced to work the extra hours but wouldn't be paid for them.
The House and Senate amendments don't affect the smaller number of workers who stand to gain overtime rights under the new rules. Managers, supervisors and others who were exempt from overtime in the past must now be paid time-and-a-half if their salary is lower than $23,660 a year.
The votes came within a week of each other, less than a month after the changes took effect Aug. 23. In the House, 22 Republicans joined Democrats to vote 223-195 against the rules. Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania - who has opposed the rules from the beginning - joined 14 Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee in opposition.
The votes came on an amendment to the $142 million bill funding labor, education and health and human services. Republican House and Senate leaders are expected to try to keep the amendment out of the final version of the bill, which President Bush has threatened to veto if the language protecting workers' rights is included.
"Could the president's contempt for workers possibly be any clearer?" CWA President Morton Bahr said. "He's actually willing to kill a critical funding bill in order to ensure that workers no longer have a right to overtime pay."
The day the rules took effect, CWA members were among several hundred unionists who protested in front of the U.S. Department of Labor - a building one activist denounced as "the scene of the crime."
Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, who sponsored Senate legislation over the past year to try to stop the rules, said Aug. 23 would be remembered as "a national day of shame for the Bush administration. This is their 'anti-Labor Day.' The stealth attack on the 40-hour workweek has begun in earnest."
By giving employers the right to reclassify many workers as administrators, executives or "learned professionals," economists project the new rules could cost at least 6 million people their right to overtime pay. The rules are the most sweeping changes ever to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the 40-hour workweek and required employers to pay time and a half for extra hours.
On average, workers who get overtime earn an extra $161 a week, money that workers who spoke at the rally said helped them pay bills and put children through college. Now they could be forced to work the extra hours but wouldn't be paid for them.
The House and Senate amendments don't affect the smaller number of workers who stand to gain overtime rights under the new rules. Managers, supervisors and others who were exempt from overtime in the past must now be paid time-and-a-half if their salary is lower than $23,660 a year.