Search News
For the Media
For media inquiries, call CWA Communications at 202-434-1168 or email comms@cwa-union.org. To read about CWA Members, Leadership or Industries, visit our About page.
Senate Overrules Overtime Scheme but House Majority Won't Budge
After the U.S. Senate cast a bipartisan vote to protect workers' overtime rights against the Department of Labor's assault, House Republicans refused twice in a matter of days in mid-May to allow the issue to come up for debate, let alone a vote.
The House voted along party lines to block a motion by Representative George Miller from coming to the floor. The non-binding motion was to instruct House members to support the Senate's amendment on overtime in a conference committee.
"They have shut down debate and denied a vote in Congress so that the Bush administration can take away workers' overtime pay," Miller (D-Calif.) said. "It is obvious that the House Republican majority is simply rubber-stamping the orders of the Bush administration."
Two House Republicans, Jim Leach of Iowa and Tim Johnson of Illinois, voted against tabling the first of Miller's two motions. Leach also voted with Miller the second time.
CWA Chief Lobbyist Lou Gerber said the House inaction isn't the end of the road. "We are working on a strategy to get a substantive vote in the House on the overtime pay rules before August 23 when the rules are scheduled to take effect," he said.
In the Senate on May 4, five Republicans joined all Democrats present - except Georgia's Zell Miller - to vote 52-47 in favor of the overtime amendment put forth repeatedly over the past few months by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
The amendment, attached to the Foreign Sales Corporation tax bill, allows updates to the FLSA's rules that govern overtime eligibility but ensures that no workers who are currently eligible would lose their overtime pay. It also protects the few provisions that expand overtime eligibility, as the new rules do for a small number of low-income managers.
"Working families are fed up with the administration's schemes and spin. They have a simple request: 'Give us an iron-clad guarantee that our overtime rights are safe,"' Harkin said before the vote. "If Mr. Bush and his Department of Labor are sincere in their stated desire to preserve overtime, they can prove it by supporting my amendment to guarantee that workers who are entitled to overtime pay under the old rules will not lose that right under the new rules."
The Republican senators who voted for the amendment were Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
CWA President Morton Bahr said there's still time for the U.S. House to follow the Senate's lead, and he urged members to do so. "Congress has a moral responsibility to act as a check on this administration's unyielding contempt for workers," he said. "There is no question that workers and their families will suffer if employers are given carte blanche to force them to put in longer hours for no extra pay."
Even though CWA and other unions succeeded in getting some of the anti-worker provisions stripped from the overtime proposals that the Labor Department put forth last spring, labor leaders, lawyers and economists say the new policies could still hurt millions of workers.
"Many of these overtime changes appear to have no justification other than to satisfy the desires of business groups," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
The rules, even as adjusted, will "mean longer hours and less pay for millions of workers - and more litigation for our entire economy," Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing May 4.
Eisenbrey, who co-authored an analysis of the Labor Department's original proposal, showing that at least 8 million workers could lose their overtime pay under the plan, said the "final rule and its preamble are rife with ambiguity. Many of the regulatory provisions have been changed without real explanations, even while the department claims - contrary to the plain language of the rule - that it is not changing the law."
The House voted along party lines to block a motion by Representative George Miller from coming to the floor. The non-binding motion was to instruct House members to support the Senate's amendment on overtime in a conference committee.
"They have shut down debate and denied a vote in Congress so that the Bush administration can take away workers' overtime pay," Miller (D-Calif.) said. "It is obvious that the House Republican majority is simply rubber-stamping the orders of the Bush administration."
Two House Republicans, Jim Leach of Iowa and Tim Johnson of Illinois, voted against tabling the first of Miller's two motions. Leach also voted with Miller the second time.
CWA Chief Lobbyist Lou Gerber said the House inaction isn't the end of the road. "We are working on a strategy to get a substantive vote in the House on the overtime pay rules before August 23 when the rules are scheduled to take effect," he said.
In the Senate on May 4, five Republicans joined all Democrats present - except Georgia's Zell Miller - to vote 52-47 in favor of the overtime amendment put forth repeatedly over the past few months by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
The amendment, attached to the Foreign Sales Corporation tax bill, allows updates to the FLSA's rules that govern overtime eligibility but ensures that no workers who are currently eligible would lose their overtime pay. It also protects the few provisions that expand overtime eligibility, as the new rules do for a small number of low-income managers.
"Working families are fed up with the administration's schemes and spin. They have a simple request: 'Give us an iron-clad guarantee that our overtime rights are safe,"' Harkin said before the vote. "If Mr. Bush and his Department of Labor are sincere in their stated desire to preserve overtime, they can prove it by supporting my amendment to guarantee that workers who are entitled to overtime pay under the old rules will not lose that right under the new rules."
The Republican senators who voted for the amendment were Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
CWA President Morton Bahr said there's still time for the U.S. House to follow the Senate's lead, and he urged members to do so. "Congress has a moral responsibility to act as a check on this administration's unyielding contempt for workers," he said. "There is no question that workers and their families will suffer if employers are given carte blanche to force them to put in longer hours for no extra pay."
Even though CWA and other unions succeeded in getting some of the anti-worker provisions stripped from the overtime proposals that the Labor Department put forth last spring, labor leaders, lawyers and economists say the new policies could still hurt millions of workers.
"Many of these overtime changes appear to have no justification other than to satisfy the desires of business groups," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
The rules, even as adjusted, will "mean longer hours and less pay for millions of workers - and more litigation for our entire economy," Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing May 4.
Eisenbrey, who co-authored an analysis of the Labor Department's original proposal, showing that at least 8 million workers could lose their overtime pay under the plan, said the "final rule and its preamble are rife with ambiguity. Many of the regulatory provisions have been changed without real explanations, even while the department claims - contrary to the plain language of the rule - that it is not changing the law."