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Action Needed
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Shell Game Being Played on Working Families
Action Needed:
Please contact your Members of Congress and urge them to oppose the bogus "comp time" bills, H.R. 1119 and S. 317. The House bill is up for a vote this Thursday, June 5, and these bills are sailing through both the House and Senate, framed by the false rhetoric that these changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act will "help working families." This could not be further from the truth.
This sham would erode labor standards like overtime pay, the 40-hour workweek and the minimum-wage law, making it easier for employers to cut costs by squeezing workers dry. Combined with the Administration's moves to include more workers in the "overtime" category—so that they can then be denied overtime if the bills pass—and large employers' current tactics to avoid paying overtime in the face of current law, these bills demand our attention. Please contact your Members of Congress now!
Background:
The attempt to undo important workplace protections for low and moderate-wage non-managerial workers has been in the works for many years but has recently gained steam under the Republican-dominated Congress and Bush Administration. This March, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) introduced the bill in the House deceptively titled "The Family Time Flexibility Act" (H.R. 1119). A similarly titled Senate bill, "The Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act" (S. 317) was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in February by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H).
The Bogus Comp Time Bills have all the makings of a well-coordinated attempt by Republican legislators, big business interests and the Bush administration to increase profits for businesses and corporations at the expense of working families. In the past few years, President Bush's biggest donors in corporate offices across America have gotten quite a scare from a series of class action suits brought by hundreds of thousands of their workers, who claim they were denied thousands of dollars in overtime pay for their labor. Wal-Mart, for example, is
currently fighting 38 different federal and state lawsuits filed by hourly workers in 30 states, accusing the company of forcing them to work long hours off the clock. Class action suits are currently being filed against several dozen corporations including Cintas, Radio Shack, Conseco Finance and Intel. Many more corporations, like conservative media giant Clear Channel Communications,
are in court waiting to see whether class action status will be awarded in the overtime cases against them. Faced with this pressure from the judicial arena, business lobbyists and Republican legislators created a new corporate loophole—getting rid of overtime altogether.
The Bogus Comp Time bills get rid of overtime protection for low-income workers and force them to work longer hours for less pay. When employees had overtime protection, they got paid time-and-a-half for any hours worked more than the 40-hour-per-week maximum. Under the comp time system being proposed, employers don't have to pay their workers a penny for those extra hours. Instead, the employees are promised paid time off sometime in the future at the employer's discretion.
Under the Bogus Comp Time Bills, the employers, not the employees, choose when they want their workers to labor extra, unpaid hours—at night, in the early morning or on weekends. Workers who refuse could risk their jobs. In addition, it is the employers, not the employees, who can choose when workers take their deserved paid time off. Employees can request comp time hours, but their requests can always be refused if they are not made "within a reasonable period" or would "unduly disrupt" the employer's operations. Employers can put off giving their workers the comp time that they deserve for up to 13 months.
Under the Bogus Comp Time Bills, employers aren't just borrowing money from their employees by making them work for free with the promise of time off in the future, they are robbing their employees by preventing them from receiving interest on the money due for those hours worked. These bills could also lead to workers being paid less than the legal minimum wage for their labor since they may be forced to work 50 or 60 hours per week while only being paid for 40 hours.
Because of this system's obvious profitability to employers, there is no doubt that if this bill passes, employers will take full advantage of this opportunity for cheap labor. According to the Economic Policy Institute, "a company with 200,000 FLSA-covered employees might get 160 free hours at $7 an hour from each of them (160 hours is the maximum allowed under these bills). That's the equivalent of $224 million that the company wouldn't have to pay its workers for up to a year after the worker has earned it." And if the company is one of the hundreds of thousands that goes bankrupt each year, the employees would not only lose their jobs, but thousands of dollars in
unpaid work as well. And the sponsors of this legislation call it "family friendly?"
The Bogus Comp Time bills could trap up to 80 million low-income,
hourly-wage workers in this destructive system. In addition, the Department of Labor is attempting to reclassify 1.3 million MORE workers as eligible for overtime pay with the knowledge that if this comp time legislation succeeds, those 1.3 million workers, 54.7% of
whom are women and 40.4% of whom are Hispanic or African American, will lose their right to a 40-hour workweek and fair wages as well.
If "family flexibility" is really the goal of the sponsors of H.R. 1119 and S. 317, the focus of the legislation should be enforcing current labor law, not abandoning the protections of overtime pay and other hard-won workplace protections. The Fair Labor Standards Act already allows for a wide variety of flexible work arrangements including comp time and flextime.
H.R. 1119 and S. 317 seriously threaten the wages, schedules and basic labor rights of millions of working families. The Bogus Comp Time Bills will create an incentive for employers to require that their most vulnerable workers put in overtime hours at no pay. Don't let the name "Family Time Flexibility Act" fool you or your Member of Congress. There is nothing family-oriented about this bill. Corporations have been lobbying Members of Congress to their advantage for years. The National Organization for Women (NOW) and our true "family-friendly" allies oppose this legislation as a serious step backwards in protecting workers' rights and harming the economic security of women and their families. Again, please contact your Members of Congress and urge them to oppose the bogus "comp time" bills, H.R. 1119 and S. 317.
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