Bush administration proposal would dramatically alter rules for paying overtime, study says.
June 26, 2003: 1:11 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - More than 8 million workers in the United States will be ineligible for overtime pay under a plan proposed recently by the Bush administration, a research group said Thursday.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal Washington think tank, examined a March proposal by the Labor Department to change the criteria for paying overtime and found that it would cost 2.5 million salaried employees and 5.5 million hourly employees their right to overtime pay.
The proposal could also cause them to work longer hours, the group said in a study published on its Web site.
"The millions of employees who will see their pay reduced will, in all likelihood, see their hours of work increase at the same time," wrote the authors of the study, Ross Eisenbrey and Jared Bernstein. "Once employers are not required to pay for overtime work, they will schedule more of it."
In fact, the study said, the total effect of the proposed rule could be far greater -- the EPI studied its impact on only 78 of the 257 "white collar" occupations identified by the Labor Department.
Under current regulations, established by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, about 79 percent of all workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, or time-and-a-half for every hour worked above 40 hours in a week.
Currently, there are three tests for whether or not an employee is ineligible for overtime -- the employee's level of pay, whether or not the employee is a salaried or hourly worker, and whether or not the employee performs certain job duties.
The Bush administration's proposal would raise the cut-off pay level for overtime -- meaning about 1.3 million more lower-wage workers will get overtime, according to the study.
But the EPI study said that benefit is more than erased by the rest of the administration's plan, which would change the job descriptions for millions of workers, moving them into "administrative," "professional" or "executive" jobs, which are not eligible for overtime. It also would make it virtually impossible for any workers making more than $65,000 a year to get overtime.
The Bush administration has said the new rules are clearer and will lower the chance of employee lawsuits. The EPI study said the proposal could have the opposite effect.
"The proposed rule is rife with ambiguity and new terms ... that will spawn new litigation," the study said.
Shortly after the study was released, the national labor organization AFL-CIO said the Labor Department had canceled a union hearing on the issue, scheduled to take place on June 30 in a Labor Department auditorium.
"The fact that Labor hasn't held any public hearings on their proposal to cut overtime pay, and that they have abruptly canceled the union movement's paid reservation to hold a hearing on the issue, is another sign of the administration's refusal to permit debate and dissent," AFL-CIO spokeswoman Kathy Roeder said. "It is a grave disservice to the millions of workers who stand to lose from the overtime proposal."
The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.
think of all the money they could save which they could then flush into wonderful GOP standards like corporate welfare, farm subsidies and pork barrel military science fiction projects like giant lasers and anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-missile missiles.
well, i do like the increased trend of the executive branch (Dept of Labor in this case) of not holding public hearings on matters that effect the public.
I agree; the government should definitely be telling businesses how to conduct itself in all matters. The only thing that pleases me more than slow conversion of the united states to socialism is the conservative retards that blindly support it because the talking heads on the radio and Fox News tell them to.
I just had a talk not too long ago with my son kind of along these lines. I told him there are two working people that I respect in this country. Those that get paid to use their brains, and those that get paid for a hard days honest labor. I told him he has a choice to be one or the other, or both, but he should strive to be at least one. I'm the guy that respects the 35 year old working at McDonalds to support his wife and child, I'm the guy that admires the uneducated factory worker giving 110% so his daughters can go skating on Friday night, and I would like him to share that respect, but ultimately it's up to him.
That was the long winded way of saying I disagree with you looking down on uneducated laborers, you can consider it a verbal middle finger.
-edit- Kyoukan my 2 year old pointed at your avatar on the new banner and said *cool*. After I beat him for two hours with reed sticks for his insolence, he retracted his statement.
While trying to not take sides lets look at it this way... a recent story from a friend of my who sells electric motors. Many of his customers are Steel Mills on the east cost. As of right now, he is continually loosing customers because they are... going out of business. WHY? Why are whole companies failing and thousands of people loosing their jobs? Because in SOME areas of the US the Labor Unions have betrayed their constituants.
I think people should get paid well... but I also think they should get paid for what their job is worth in the grand scheme of a company. One company that closed had fork lift drivers, with a high school education or less making $90,000 a year. Now if you are paying fork lift drivers that, whom you can't fire even if they don't do jack shit then what do you pay the people who worked hard, went to college and have student loans etc to pay back? people coming up with ideas for keep the business alive? fact is you can't, you can't afford them and you go out of business and everyone looses.
Personally I think the Bush plan sucks, but I do think we should reevaluate some union standards.
Krimson Klaw wrote:-edit- Kyoukan my 2 year old pointed at your avatar on the new banner and said *cool*. After I beat him for two hours with reed sticks for his insolence, he retracted his statement.
Guess there will be a lot more people joining the elite club of salaried employees w/ no ot pay. As a long time member of the club, I welcome you as I was jealous I couldn't get time and a half for going over just 40 hours a week. Most anybody who doesn't get ot pay are purely jealous of those that do.
It breaks my heart that the auto-workers, cable-monkeys, and other overpaid, uneducated, lazy, unionized fucks would no longer get overtime.
Can there be anything that comes out of your mouth that doesn't sound completely moronic?
i have no idea if this effects me or not (or if it is even real). there are lots of people in my group who are salaried but when the shit hits the fan and we are on call we get paid overtime.
Sueven wrote:The fact that you stereotype uneducated laborers like that is fucking disgusting. You are a worthless human being.
I used to work with ~5000 uneducated union fucks. It's not a stereotype, it's the truth. These guys would get like 3 service calls a week, work maybe 20 actual hours (counting travel time), make 10 hours OT, and would still bitch about it.
Whether you worked with 5 or 50,000 it is still a sterotype. 5,000 isn't even a significant sampling of all the union workers in the United States, so there's no way you'ev had enough interaction with union workers to draw any conclusions on the group of them as a whole. If there was only 1,000,000 union workers in the United States, you would have worked with a mere 0.5% of them. Your elitest, I'm better than them, attitude is sickening.
A buddy at work helped his sister get a job at the Dodge plant putting lug nuts on new trucks. She had to load the wrench, swing it into place and back thw wrench off once the gauge read the right number of ft/lbs of torque.
For this demanding task, she was paid $46,000 a year. No education, no training, no certs.
Union wages are completely out of hand and have been for a long time.
No, its unions that are completely out of hand. They really did serve their puprose 75 years ago, but their mandate became one of dominating the employer instead of working with them.
I remember an union sponsore airline strike against an airline in the last 5 years. The employees wanted large raises, the company said they couldn't afford it. The employee's struck, the company gave in. Withing 18 months the company filed for Chapter 11 and laid off like 10,000 employees.
Many unions are no longer looking out for the emplyoees, they are looking out for the officers of the Unions.
Heh, Dalmoth, hence my point about the Fork lift driver.
Here is my experience with Unions. A Telephone company I use to work for had union members in Ohio whom I worked with a lot here is a summation...
They were overpaid for the jobs compared to other employees in the company. Their benefits, neg. by the Union, SUCKED compared to everyone elses, maybe that is why they needed more pay... who knows. EVERYONE of them had a set schedule of work load. It didn't matter if it was 10 AM, if they got their quota they didn't do jack shit the rest of the day. Didn't matter if a customer, paying customer, needed something rushed... too bad, I got my quota in, can't do anymore. Yup that's right, CAN'T do anymore... can't do as much work as EVERYONE else because if I do they will always make me work that hard... and it will screw up the contract.
Overall if they had not had the Union they would have had to probably work a little harder for their money like everyone else. But in return they would have gotten much better benefits which in the long run would have more than compensated for the increase in salary... in my opnion the Union was letting them down AND putting unions in a bad light everywhere else in the company. It was funny that during that time they tried to start a unions in 3 other areas of the country with the same company. The employees in each area, primarily due to their experiences with the people in Ohio, voted them all down by like a 99% NO.
Of course that is my only experience with them but I can tell you it totally turned me off and everyone I knew.
If that isn't how unions work these days they need to REALLY do some marketing because I know of no one who has had a good experience working in the same company as unioinized employees... heh and I know a lot of people.
Unions aren't ideal no, yet most companies that have a unionized work force are not unprofitable.
Unions exist because there is a need for them, period. Yes some are much too powerful, but I will take a powerful union over a greedy corporation that abuses their workers and pays them shit, and that is what you get when you don't have a union. Most anyone who's ever worked in the service industry for a long enough period of time will attest to that.
I think if you read up a little on what it was like in europe and then the united states before the workers unionized, you wouldn't look down on them so much. Unions weren't a result of a bunch of greedy laborers sitting around saying they should be paid twice as much to do half the work. They were being abused.
Unions had their purpose when workers were being treated like crap. It just seems to me that these days, people don't take personal responsibility for their own careers any longer. In NJ it's the teacher strikes that really get me.
Many of them are unreasonable. About a year ago, a company a couple floors above us striked outside. One of their cute little chants was, "3% don't pay the rent". Our company had to cap raises at 2% and we all had to walk by these idiots that don't see the bigger picture. Hell, a lot of companies had a pay raise freezes because they were bleeding too much, including my wife's. Fortunately, she was promoted and got something anyway but that was a result of 5 years of extraordinary work.
I feel that if you think you're getting rooked, just look elsewhere. If you can't find something elsewhere, be happy that you have something because a lot of folks don't.
Kudo wrote:But. Unions can take it to far.
Anyone remember the Air traffic controllers going on strike ? or was it the pilots ?...cant remember but anyways
It HALTED Travel in the united states, if you were goin to go somewhere flying that day, you got pretty much screwed.
I also remember Ronnie coming in and squashing the strike. Hell yeah it was a good day.
Kudo wrote:But. Unions can take it to far.
Anyone remember the Air traffic controllers going on strike ? or was it the pilots ?...cant remember but anyways
It HALTED Travel in the united states, if you were goin to go somewhere flying that day, you got pretty much screwed.
I also remember Ronnie coming in and squashing the strike. Hell yeah it was a good day.
Bill stopped the flight attendants of United if I remember correctly.
Kudo wrote:But. Unions can take it to far.
Anyone remember the Air traffic controllers going on strike ? or was it the pilots ?...cant remember but anyways
It HALTED Travel in the united states, if you were goin to go somewhere flying that day, you got pretty much screwed.
I also remember Ronnie coming in and squashing the strike. Hell yeah it was a good day.
Bill stopped the flight attendants of United if I remember correctly.
Kyou, I agree that Unions have done some good things in the past, esp. when workers were treated like shit but I think that time may have also passed...
So you think if unions dissappeared tomorrow then the workplace would become a magical happy fairyland of fair treatment and honest wages for an honest day's work?
We'd be back in the dark ages by Wednesday. Unions are the only thing that keeps management in check. Big corporations are all about the bottom line and even with unions the first cutbacks are always made to the labor force.
Maybe that's because a lot of lifetime union members have never taken responsibility for their own careers and wouldn't have any idea of where to start.
My wife belongs to a union, but that union isn't allowed to strike by law. If more unions had to negotiate their differences using other forms of leverage besides striking, I wouldn't have a problem with them personally.
Being that I'm not in a position to hire union or having never been in one myself, I don't know. However, it IS done regularly. Halting services should not be lawful. Certain occupations make it mandatory to join a union. The employees don't even have a choice. This means you can't hire qualified individuals without the union. The company or service in question is forced to contract the union out. They have no choice but to hire a union member. In a fair market, there could be union and non-union members. Their leverage wouldn't cripple the industry. There should be a stigma attached to striking but w/in the union, it's attached to those that don't like striking.
