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Republicans Propose Weakening Overtime Laws, Call It ‘Family Friendly’
How very Orwellian of them. 
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/03/24/3638485/republicans-paid-family-leave/
On Tuesday, Republican senators reintroduced a bill intended to address the country’s lack of paid family leave.
The bill, the Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act, would let employers give their workers an option to put their earned overtime hours toward paid family leave, rather than getting paid time-and-a-half for them. Currently, private sector employees can only be paid for extra time on the clock, not use the hours to accrue time off. House Republicans passed a very similar proposal last year.
While Republicans tout it as a way to give employees more flexibility, it could weaken already weak rules that require workers to be paid extra for working extra hours, thus ensuring that workweeks don’t grow out of control and employees are compensated fairly. Currently, 21.7 million people are exempt from overtime pay because of the loopholes in the law and likely wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the Republican proposal. Meanwhile, opponents have argued that while workers would in theory opt voluntarily to get time off instead of the extra pay, employers would end up with the power to coerce their workers to choose time off.
Employers already often cheat workers out of overtime. They had to pay their workers more than $136 million in back wages last year after denying them overtime pay. But that’s an undercount of how widespread the practice is. It’s estimated that employers rob employees of more than $50 billion in wages every year by denying overtime and other labor law violations. The vast majority doesn’t get reported, but even those who do report wage theft often don’t recover any money.
The bill, the Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act, would let employers give their workers an option to put their earned overtime hours toward paid family leave, rather than getting paid time-and-a-half for them. Currently, private sector employees can only be paid for extra time on the clock, not use the hours to accrue time off. House Republicans passed a very similar proposal last year.
While Republicans tout it as a way to give employees more flexibility, it could weaken already weak rules that require workers to be paid extra for working extra hours, thus ensuring that workweeks don’t grow out of control and employees are compensated fairly. Currently, 21.7 million people are exempt from overtime pay because of the loopholes in the law and likely wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the Republican proposal. Meanwhile, opponents have argued that while workers would in theory opt voluntarily to get time off instead of the extra pay, employers would end up with the power to coerce their workers to choose time off.
Employers already often cheat workers out of overtime. They had to pay their workers more than $136 million in back wages last year after denying them overtime pay. But that’s an undercount of how widespread the practice is. It’s estimated that employers rob employees of more than $50 billion in wages every year by denying overtime and other labor law violations. The vast majority doesn’t get reported, but even those who do report wage theft often don’t recover any money.
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they make us take our flex time the very next day! No more saving it for Friday afternoon. 
