People Died to Get Overtime Pay

[midnight]

Republicans are trying to pass an "alternative" to overtime pay. This is really about taking away the eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek. Will weekends be next? What about an "alternative" to paying workers at all?
House Republicans are pushing a bill that takes away extra pay for overtime, substituting "comp" time instead. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is the law that brought us the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek. This law does not prohibit employers from requiring workers to work over 40 hours. Instead, it gives employers an incentive to instead pay extra or hire more people, and gives employees a premium if they do have to work longer. (Note that this is also the law that brought us a minimum wage and outlawed child labor.)
There is proof that overtime pay works: workers like domestic workers and agricultural workers - jobs not covered by the FLSA - are twice as likely to have to work more than 40 hours in a week. And even with this law, Americans already work more hours than in almost any other industrialized country.
The Bill - No Guarantees
The House will be voting on H.R. 1406, The Working Families Flexibility Act, which lets employers offer "comp time" instead of overtime pay. The problem is that employers will pressure workers to take comp time instead of overtime, which reduces paychecks and gets rid of the incentive to hire more people. Later, the employees will be pressured to not take that comp time, or will have to be "on call," etcetera.


http://truth-out.org/news/item/16238-now-they-want-to-take-away-the-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-week

[AzDar]

1. K & R

[Island Blue]

2. Governments are also exempt from this.

Much to my dismay. I work for county government and the only time we're ever offered the option of overtime pay is if we work during a hurricane. (Which at least for my position, is not mandatory.) We do get comp time for overtime work, but I'd really rather have overtime pay.

[jimmyolsenblues]

3. they want to outlaw overtime?

Lets get this straight,
1) republicans lost the 2012 election
2) romney said he will never get the 47% , (which is ironic cause he only got 47.2%)
3) romney won the white vote, lost the minority vote, which is ironic because it shows minorities vote more than the majority white population
4) republicans have estranged women's rights to choose, love guns more after sandy hook, and lost the minority vote.

How will republicans win more votes .... by outlawing overtime..Really?

Wow , good job Republican National Committee, you keep doing exactly what you are doing and the 2016 Presidential race is ever closer.

[Purplehazed]

4. No, the bill doesn't outlaw overtime.

It makes it legal for employers to pay comp time at the rate of 1.5 to employees who voluntarily accept it, instead of pay at 1.5.

On the surface, it might seem practical. However, will employees be coerced into accepting it? and I think more importantly, will employees actually be able to take the time? What will the employer do if a high percentage of employees have large amounts of banked time?

[jimmyolsenblues]

5. Hey guess what

An employer can change the rules at will.
This is a bill sponsered by republicans.
With all the government waste, with many wars, will a trillion dollars spent in iraq and afganistan.

You know what these republicans are worried about?

Employer rights?

[midnight]

7. That's right.... Wisconsin's Act 10 is going national.... They are trying to make the whole country

a right to work state....

[Populist_Prole]

8. They're not really doing it to win more votes IMO

It's just that they believe that their base, the working class "values voters", even though they'd be hurt by this, is still tribally loyal to the GOP. As long as the GOP says all the right things about god & guns and waves the flag around, their rube base won't care and will remain team players.

[YoungDemCA]

10. The GOP base is not really working class

Just for the record. Romney, for example, won 53 percent of the votes of Americans making between $50k-$100k and 54 percent of the votes of those making over $100k. Obama won 63 percent of voters making under $30k and 57 percent of votrs making $30k-$50k.

http://www.accuracy.org/release/election-results-the-income-divide/

[Populist_Prole]

13. Yes that is true but

They still very much need rural white social conservatives, and as long as they play to social issues the former will accept policies economically hostile to them as collateral damage.

[YoungDemCA]

22. If only those rural white social conservatives could see how it is in their best economic interest..

...to vote Democratic.

The agreement's supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA passed the Senate 61-38. Senate supporters were 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; it went into effect on January 1, 1994.[3][4] Clinton, while signing the NAFTA bill, stated that "NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement#Negotiation_and_U.S._ratification

A growing number of House Democrats are concerned that President Obama's proposal to cut Social Security benefits will haunt the party at the polls in 2014.

Although Democrats have long-championed the retirement program, they say Obama's plan to reduce payments for future beneficiaries through a chained consumer price index (CPI) has weakened their stance and opened the door for Republicans to vilify the president.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/293703-dems-fear-obamas-social-security-cut-will-haunt-them-in-2014

snip:

A president, for instance, has the unilateral power to at least propose tough Wall Street regulations, even if Congress is too corrupt to pass them. A president, likewise, has the unilateral power to nominate genuinely independent regulators, even if a Wall Street-dominated Senate might try to halt such a nomination. In short, a president has the unilateral power to at least force a serious fight over these issues — and Obama has refused to even do that. Instead, he championed bailouts and a Wall Street “reform” package that let the banks off the hook, and he has appointed Wall Street pals like Lanny Breuer at Justice and Mary Jo White at the Securities Exchange Commission.

One hackneyed retort to all that is to cast Obama as a “realist” who doesn’t want to pick fights with Congress that he knows he cannot win. That logic is predicated on the absurd notion that a president cannot use the bully pulpit to change public opinion — that is, to actually lead and, ultimately, to win. But even if you accept such apologism, it still cannot account for how the president has used — or, really, not used — his unilateral power to prosecute.

Obama is a president who asserts the right to execute American citizens without judge, jury or trial. That means that in his role overseeing the Department of Justice, he (like his predecessors) clearly retains the lesser-but-still-serious power to tell his political appointees at the Justice Department to prioritize certain kinds of prosecutions. In fact, this is exactly what he just did when this month he issued an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to “maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.”

He could just as easily have a similar executive order after winning a presidential election on promises to “hold Wall Street accountable.” But he chose not to back then, just as he chooses not to today.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/01/31/barack-obama-wall-street-co-conspirator/

And so on and so forth....

Oh wait...

[jimmyolsenblues]

15. You are correct

That is it in a nut shell, there are more people who make less than 50k than more than 50k.
I have zero problem with anyone who works.
I am very upset with people who do not work by their choice , SSI , unemployment.

I am not talking about someone who has truly looked for a job the past two years, and worked hard looking for job.

I know 3 people who are perfectly ok to work and collect ssi

[midnight]

9. I sure hope this does backfire on them....

[Orrex]

6. K/R

The point can't be made often enough or strongly enough!

[Matariki]

11. What an Orwellian name - "The Working Families Flexibility Act"

as if it were a favor for workers.

[Fire Walk With Me]

12. Of course. Who would support something called "FUCK YOU AMERICA", the bill? :D

Well, teabaggers would.

[midnight]

16. Exactly and this is why you know ALEC is behind this legislation.... It always says the opposite

of what they intend....

[Fire Walk With Me]

18. Yep. "Say the opposite of what we intend" is classic newspeak. "Right to work" kills unions.

"Citizens United" and "tea party" front billionaire legislation and politicians.

[Matariki]

21. lol, so true. sad but funny.

[markiv]

14. in tech, most overtime is 100 percent UNPAID

i once worked 60 hours unpaid overtime in a single week

100 hour week, for 40 hours pay = 60 hours unpaid overtime

in most of tech, then only thing that ends at 40 hours is the poay

[midnight]

17. How did you get compensated for this? Or didn't you?

[markiv]

19. i kept my job

that's it

40 hours pay, 60 hours totally unpaid, basically a slave

that comes to 14.2 hours per day, for example 8 am to 10:20pm 7 days straight

and that's precisely why tech has so much overtime, because it's free. that's not a disgruntled employee's suspicion, it's what a firm partner told me, when i was up for manager, that you plan projects like that DELIBERATLY, because profit soars when you're billing hours you get for free. he was TRAINING me to do this!

i immiediatly began looking for another job, but now the whole industry's that way, it's why they like indentured foreign workers so much - no matter how much abuse, they CANT quit

'you work hard, or we send you back'

that's what the whole H-1b visa thing is, ENFORCING the above labor practices, that tend to use up and spit out workers

[midnight]

25. I agree with you about the whole reason behind the H-1b visa thing....

[markiv]

20. i've only seen one place where people could really take 'flex time'

any place else that sold it to new employess, no matter how much FREE overtime (salaried exempt) you worked, you'd be out the door if you really tried to use it

and even those that do supposedly 'stockpile' up the time, it will be like vacation in many places, you have it but you can never really use it (because of workload) before it expires at the end of the year

[HiPointDem]

23. kr. meanwhile, in the jodi arias trial...

[smirkymonkey]

24. K&R

[Half-Century Man]

26. Flexibility

The flexibility to bend over and kiss their asses while they fuck you in yours.

[midnight]

27. Yes.... And we all will have to do the Gumby....