'Poison pills'
Attacks on worker protection law tough to swallow
The Bush administration and the business interests it supports are tossing around words like “modernize” and “family friendly” to cloud the real reason they want to change worker protections provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
It’s really about making workers put in more hours for less money.
“You’re supposed to get premium pay for working overtime, and this would cut into our members’ earnings,” said Ruel B. Martin, a UAW Local 1155 retiree in Birmingham, Ala., who remains active at his local.
Passed by Congress in 1938, the FLSA’s bedrock requirement is that employers must provide overtime when employees work more than 40 hours per week. Covering nearly all non-government workers in the United States, the law also sets a federal minimum hourly wage (now $5.15) and restricts child labor.
“The important Fair Labor Standards Act should be strengthened, not gutted, in order to further enhance the quality of life for all working people,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.
Republicans hope to erode the FLSA’s most basic protections with these “poison pill” amendments:
Comp time
Workers could be forced to take so-called “comp time” when the
employer chooses. By allowing this for the now-mandatory overtime pay, an
employer can force an employee to work OT and not compensate those overtime
hours at a higher rate. Work more hours for less money? There’s nothing
“family friendly” about that.
Bonus
This change won’t “modernize” the law, as proponents tout,
but it will be an incentive for employers to pay “bonuses” instead
of regular hourly rates. Anything that an employer could characterize as a
“performance bonus” would be excluded from the definition of “regular
pay” under the law. As a result, these bonuses wouldn’t be included
in the calculation of overtime pay rates, which would decrease sharply for
millions of workers.
Minimum wage and OT
Millions of workers in funeral homes and certain sales and computer jobs occupations
would be exempt from receiving the minimum wage and overtime.
No wonder pro-worker legislators call these measures “poison pills”
— they’re pretty difficult to swallow.
