Working families could see their overtime pay cut, their work week increased and certain occupations no longer covered by overtime pay protection under five separate bills now in play in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Those Big Business-backed bills, plus the Bush administration’s recent regulatory proposals that could deny overtime pay to millions of workers, combine to create one of the biggest threats to working families’ paychecks in years. (Contact your senators and representative and urge them to oppose the five overtime bills now in Congress.)

The bills were introduced by Republican lawmakers and have the strong support of employer groups that are lobbying hard for their passage. H.R. 1119 and S. 317 would allow employers to offer compensatory time off to workers in place of normal time-and-a-half overtime pay. The House bill, on April 3, passed the House Education and the Workforce Protection Subcommittee with support from Republicans and opposition from Democrats. 

The bills to exempt some occupations from the minimum wage and overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are S. 237 for certain construction engineers; S. 292 for funeral directors and licensed embalmers; and S. 495 for certain computer professionals.

The federal FLSA sets minimum standards for wages and overtime entitlement and includes provisions related to child labor, equal pay and other workplace wage issues.

H.R. 1119 is scheduled to be voted on by the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee April 3 before it goes to the full Education and Workforce Committee and then to a vote by the full House. Hearings have not been scheduled for the other bills.

‘Flexible Work Schedules’ Translate to More Work

For the millions of employees who count on cash overtime to make ends meet and pay for housing, food and health care, the bills could take those extra dollars away. And for those who do not seek to work overtime, the proposed legislation could open the door to increased mandatory overtime requirements.

Both H.R. 1119 and S. 317 give an employer ultimate control over when—or even if—a worker is allowed to use earned comp time. The legislation also provides no meaningful protection against employers requiring workers to take time off instead of cash and no protection against employers assigning overtime only to workers who agree to take time off instead of cash.

On the surface, the legislation says it is the employee who can decide to accept comp time instead of paid overtime. But “this ignores the reality that most workers have no say in their hours or working conditions,” Ellen Bravo, director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, told the House Workforce Protections subcommittee at a March 12 hearing on H.R. 1119.

“There is nothing in the bill (H.R. 1119) for workers except rhetoric and slick marketing,” according to an analysis by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president and policy director of the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. “Not only will employees who substitute comp time earn less, so will employees who refuse comp time and insist on being paid for their overtime at the time they work it. Employers will assign overtime preferentially to those who accept comp time, thereby depriving the workers who need the extra cash of overtime work,” Eisenbrey says.

In fact, H.R. 1119 could be a huge cash bonus for greedy employers. “Under H.R. 1199, an employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until a year later, at the employer’s discretion,” Eisenbrey says.

With a 160-hour overtime maximum allowed under H.R. 1119, “A company with 200,000 employees, for instance, might get 160 free hours at $7 an hour from each [employee],” Eisenbrey reports. “That’s the equivalent of $224 million that the company wouldn’t have to pay to its workers for up to a year after the worker has earned it. Considering that under normal circumstances, the employer might have to pay 6 percent interest for a commercial loan of this magnitude, it could save $13 million by relying on comp time to ‘borrow’ from its employees instead,” he says.

Both H.R. 1119 and S. 317 would allow employers to save money by requiring more mandatory overtime, which would encourage them to schedule even more overtime that would keep workers away from their families for longer hours.

The legislation “does nothing to address the problem of mandatory overtime. In fact, by making it possible for employers not to pay for overtime and instead offer comp time at some later date convenient for the employer, this bill provides an incentive to require workers to endure long hours on the job,” Bravo says.

Say Goodbye to the 40-Hour Workweek

A separate provision in the Senate bill would eliminate the 40-hour workweek altogether and substitute an 80-hour two-week work period. Workers who work 50 hours in one week, for example, would not receive any overtime pay or comp time.

The bills’ congressional backers and the Big Business community claim that substituting comp time for overtime pay gives workers more flexibility in their schedules and time to meet family needs. Yet today, most employers won’t let employees have time off in exchange for overtime hours even though the law permits it, Eisenbrey says.

The comp time legislation, he says, “is nothing more than a scheme to allow employers to avoid paying for overtime—a scheme that will result in longer hours, lower incomes and less predictable workweeks for American workers.”

More

Contact your senators and representative and urge them to oppose H.R. 1119 and S. 317.

Tell President George W. Bush: Working families count on overtime pay.

Read about President Bush’s attack on overtime pay rules.

Find out what the current overtime rules are and what you can do if denied overtime pay.

Read EPI's analysis of comp time proposals in Congress.

Get details on how today’s economy affects working families.