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Final Overtime Rule Could Hurt Millions of Workers
Ignoring a national outcry from working families and bipartisan opposition in Congress, the Bush administration has gone forward with changes in overtime law that could strip millons of workers of their right to a 40-hour workweek.
The Department of Labor published a final version of the rules in late April. While some of the anti-worker changes officials proposed a year ago were watered down in the final document, labor leaders and lawmakers said there is no doubt that many Americans will suffer as a result.
"Many workers who now have the right to go home at the end of an eight-hour day, or be paid overtime for staying on the job, will no longer have that choice," CWA President Morton Bahr said.
"The Bush administration has given managers across this country a a green light to force workers to put in extra hours without having to pay them an extra dime. The administration and its corporate friends may be celebrating now, but they should know that this isn't something workers will forget when they head to the polls in November," he said.
Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said he and other lawmakers aren't giving up the fight to stop the regulations. "They changed some numbers, but the bottom line remains the same: the new Bush overtime rules will deny millions of middle-class workers the overtime pay they earn and deserve," he said. "Killing overtime pay protections at a time when so many Americans are taking on second jobs just to make ends meet shows how out of touch the Bush administration is with average people."
Bahr said union members who worked hard to try to defeat the rules should be proud of the fact that there were some changes in language, and that cutting off workers from overtime eligibility won't be quite as easy as employers envisioned when the proposals were put forth last year. "CWA members and staff were out front on this from the very beginning and our work helped build a coalition and a national awareness that forced the administration to back down on some aspects of the plan that corporate America badly wanted," he said.
The AFL-CIO said the administration "tried to get away with a disastrous overtime pay cut but faced an unprecedented pushback from working people. Our unions forced important changes, and that's a real credit to the power of grassroots organizing."
But the fact that so many workers still stand to be hurt is "unconscionable," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. "It is especially indefensible now, at a time when wages are shrinking and families are struggling. Overtime pay cuts discourage job creation and cut back on family time. This is an attack on the wage standards of working people, plain and simple."
A proposal that was altered in favor of workers is one that would have exempted virtually anyone earning over $65,000 from being paid overtime. It has been changed to affect people making over $100,000 a year. Lawyers point out that while the change is positive in terms of what the DOL wanted there was no cap at all before, and there is still no language that adjusts that figure for inflation in future years.
Undoing a major public relations mistake, the DOL also appears to be ensuring overtime for police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and licensed practical nurses by specifically listing their duties as "non-exempt."
The administration and DOL's response to opponents for the past year has been to attack opponents and deny the very existence of some of the controversial language in the proposals, even when confronted by members of Congress in formal hearings. That hasn't changed, opponents said.
"Over the past year, in promoting its plan to eliminate overtime rights for 8 million workers, the Bush administration has left an appalling trail of misstatements, evasions, half-truths, and outright falsifications that destroy any credibility they might have as defenders of workers' overtime pay," Sweeney said.
The Department of Labor published a final version of the rules in late April. While some of the anti-worker changes officials proposed a year ago were watered down in the final document, labor leaders and lawmakers said there is no doubt that many Americans will suffer as a result.
"Many workers who now have the right to go home at the end of an eight-hour day, or be paid overtime for staying on the job, will no longer have that choice," CWA President Morton Bahr said.
"The Bush administration has given managers across this country a a green light to force workers to put in extra hours without having to pay them an extra dime. The administration and its corporate friends may be celebrating now, but they should know that this isn't something workers will forget when they head to the polls in November," he said.
Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said he and other lawmakers aren't giving up the fight to stop the regulations. "They changed some numbers, but the bottom line remains the same: the new Bush overtime rules will deny millions of middle-class workers the overtime pay they earn and deserve," he said. "Killing overtime pay protections at a time when so many Americans are taking on second jobs just to make ends meet shows how out of touch the Bush administration is with average people."
Bahr said union members who worked hard to try to defeat the rules should be proud of the fact that there were some changes in language, and that cutting off workers from overtime eligibility won't be quite as easy as employers envisioned when the proposals were put forth last year. "CWA members and staff were out front on this from the very beginning and our work helped build a coalition and a national awareness that forced the administration to back down on some aspects of the plan that corporate America badly wanted," he said.
The AFL-CIO said the administration "tried to get away with a disastrous overtime pay cut but faced an unprecedented pushback from working people. Our unions forced important changes, and that's a real credit to the power of grassroots organizing."
But the fact that so many workers still stand to be hurt is "unconscionable," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. "It is especially indefensible now, at a time when wages are shrinking and families are struggling. Overtime pay cuts discourage job creation and cut back on family time. This is an attack on the wage standards of working people, plain and simple."
A proposal that was altered in favor of workers is one that would have exempted virtually anyone earning over $65,000 from being paid overtime. It has been changed to affect people making over $100,000 a year. Lawyers point out that while the change is positive in terms of what the DOL wanted there was no cap at all before, and there is still no language that adjusts that figure for inflation in future years.
Undoing a major public relations mistake, the DOL also appears to be ensuring overtime for police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and licensed practical nurses by specifically listing their duties as "non-exempt."
The administration and DOL's response to opponents for the past year has been to attack opponents and deny the very existence of some of the controversial language in the proposals, even when confronted by members of Congress in formal hearings. That hasn't changed, opponents said.
"Over the past year, in promoting its plan to eliminate overtime rights for 8 million workers, the Bush administration has left an appalling trail of misstatements, evasions, half-truths, and outright falsifications that destroy any credibility they might have as defenders of workers' overtime pay," Sweeney said.