House Passes GOP Measure To Offer PTO Alternative To Overtime Pay

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162...ure-to-offer-pto-alternative-to-overtime-pay/


By a vote of 223-204, the House on Wednesday passed the Working Families Flexibility Act, which allows employers to offer hourly workers comp time when they exceed their 40-hour workweek. It was a party line vote, with all but a few Democrats voting against the bill.


Republicans say the bill is family-friendly and gives workers the flexibility to choose how they would like to be compensated for their overtime - either with comp time or with overtime pay. Currently, employers must offer hourly workers "time and a half" for every hour they work over 40 hours a week.


Rep Martha Roby, R-Ala., was the bill's chief sponsor. She says with two kids of her own - ages eight and four - she understands how crucial comp time can be to working parents.

"As a mom that wants to be there for the PTA meeting or for the swim meet, to have that flexibility is huge," she told CBS News.

But Democrats argue the bill doesn't protect low-paid workers from employers who might push them to take comp time when they would really prefer overtime pay. And, they add, there are no guarantees that workers would be allowed to use that comp time at a time of their choosing.


"This legislation does not guarantee that workers can use the time they earn when they need it the most," said Rep. Carol Shea Porter, D-N.H., on the House floor today.


"Here we go again, my friends on the other side of the aisle are refusing to work together to help American families," responded Roby.


She argues Democrats have misrepresented her bill, telling CBS News: "It doesn't undermine overtime pay, because if an employee wants overtime pay for time they've worked beyond the 40 hour work week, under this law they are certainly entitled to that."


This bill is part of the GOP's recent attempts to portray itself as family- and woman-friendly. Rep Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., described the Working Families Flexibility Act as "pro-family, pro-worker legislation that gives workers the flexibility to spend time with family, attend parent-teacher conferences, care for aging parents or tend to other family needs that may arise."


Democrats, though, say the bill is simply a repackaged GOP proposal from 1997. "They've dressed up an old idea in order to be family friendly," Rep Donna Edwards, D-Md., told CBS News.


"Let's look at the history," Edwards added. "I mean, the GOP has gone after Medicare. The GOP has tried to privatize social security. The GOP fights labor organizing and collective bargaining agreements that employees could benefit from. "And now here they are cutting away at the 40 hour work week," she continued. "The-40 hour work week has been with us for 75 years, and it's there for a reason. It's there to make sure employees aren't abused by their employers."


The Democrat-controlled Senate has shown no inclination of taking this bill up, and the White House has threatened to veto it.

 

Anything that GOP Congress does is to help big time employers and big corporations not regular people. So,I'm glad the Prez would veto it pronto.

 

I disagree it's 'so terrible'.

In my industry we practice something very similar to this and I loved it!

For example, when my vacation time arrived, I ALWAYS needed more than 2 weeks due to my world traveling, and I was able to garner blocks of over a month, all because I worked extra hrs in exchange for time off. The difference was I did it with fellow company employees (rather than with the higher ups), so I'd work their hours on my day off which they'd take off for themselves, and then they'd work mine when I went on vacation. I'd utilize several people to rack up my consecutive 'extra' time off. It was perfect.

 

Bliss, you do understand that the GOP voted on this bill in the interest of American Corporations.

Corporations want to eliminate the 40 hour work week, eliminate overtime/doubletime, eliminate sick days, eliminate workmans comp and anything else that benefits employees.

In every human resources room, breakroom in America...there is a large poster up on the wall that states the Federal/State Labor Laws and Wages.

Corporations want to completly eliminate that poster and the laws on it.

In other words, they want to go back to the good ol' days....not the 1950's or 1960s that the average American want....the corporations want things like it was prior to 1865.....Slave Labor.

 

Shit is depressing because that's really what's going on.

There's a corporate takeover going on in D.C.

The Fortune 500 re-wrote the tax code so that the rich and big corps pay less effective income taxes than 9-to-5ers.

They've dramatically cut union membership and convinced much of the voting public that unions are a negative drag on capitalism.

Adjusted wages have been stagnant for over a decade.
Investment banks have blocked any meaningful securities regulation from being passed after the Stock Market mortgage derivatives collapse in '08.

The rich in this country are more disproportionately wealthy compared to the rest of this nation's 300+ million citizens than at any time in this nation's history.

Tea baggers and conservatives complain about the threat from the overreach and tyranny of the federal government, but the real danger are the shrinking wages, limited professional mobility and worker protections from employers that's going to turn this nation upside down and have people marching in the suburbs.

Who are the real takers in the U.S. economy??
Who bailed out the Wall Street banks who've been making record profits since the bailout???

There's something seriously fucked up in this country when the six Walmart heirs who's estimated wealth collectively is over $100 billion, are worth more than the bottom 41% of ALL Americans - 124 million people(!!).

And these are the same class of people who want to shrink the size of the federal government until it can be 'drowned in a bathtub'.

Wealth in a democracy can't flow up indefinitely to the top 2% and then we blame the old and the poor because middle class wages are falling.

If we get a GOP President in 2016 I really believe because of the Republican's obsession with cutting social programs and austerity economic policies and their refusal to cut tax breaks for the rich, or require them to pay a higher effective tax, we could be in for very bad times in the near future.

Our Congress is owned by corporations. We still pay the oil industry billions of dollars in tax subsidies. Why??
It's just so fucked up.:smt106

 

Even when the GOP were in Office, the poster remained.

Please, some Unions are as corrupt as the corporations. Or are you going to glaze over/white-wash that.

I hate Corps as much as the next person, but they employ a hell of a lot of people. I HATE that they answer to investors, which is why I like private companies. But it is what it is right now in this climate.

At your reply, maybe you missed this part -

"It doesn't undermine overtime pay, because if an employee wants overtime pay for time they've worked beyond the 40 hour work week, under this law they are certainly entitled to that."

 

In his time in office, Obama has given the Banks trillions in bailout in return for campaign support.
What have they given the people in return?

Here's a smidgen of that disappearing money...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-of-the-bank-bailout/3309/

 

No, I did not miss that part, they are leaving that in there for now to keep the ignorant mass' happy.....my point was made earlier on how Corporations are trying to eliminate everything that benefits employees.

Overtime will be a thing of the past and they want to make the work environment just like what it is in China, India and Bangladesh.

You saw Newt Gingrich hint last year about eliminating child labor laws and put children back to work instead of sending them to school, this is happening right now in other countries.

Similiar to the pension plan, they have slowly eliminated it and silently converted everything to worthless 401K's that only benefit Wall Street.

They are doing the same with this House Bill.

Andromeda hit the nail right on the head with his earlier reply.

 

This bill won't make it past the Senate anyway.

 

Won't matter. When time for layoffs come, companies will lay off the employees from the "overtime pay group" while retaining the "comp time" group. The message will be loud and clear in what employers will want their employees to accept.

 

Assuming there is going to be "two groups", no? What if people mix-n-match, will that make a third group?

I don't really get this focus on O/T - many of the people the dissenting Dems say will be adversely affected usually work for Companies that are abandoning the 40 week in favor of hiring part-time employees, doing so in order to offset rising health Insurance costs and the looming New Healthcare laws. That is the more real concern, IMO.

 

Wall Street spent more campaign dollars backing Romney in 2012 than Obama.

Come on Bliss. Which party traditionally has supported the interests of big business and the investment class??

Any banking reform legislation supported by Obama and the Dems has been cut off at the knees by the GOP from Day 1.

Congress authorized the bank bailout, it wasn't something Obama approved unilaterally.
Both sides have blood on their hands, but the GOP actually supports dismantling worker rights, lower wages and less employee protections and a weaker, less effective federal government.

 

People love being willfully ignorant to that. The president doesn't control the money congress does. That's middle school civics.

 

AndreB and TDK, I know the GOP are pro-corps, but you act like solyndra was a corner store. I gave you a loong list of corps in the politics thread that Obama backed and bailed, that failed miserably.

Please don't act like he couldn't veto the bailouts. Wasn't baling out the motor industry an election promise??
And didn't he say "Banks are too big to fail"??
Has his JD prosecuted any of those thieving bums on Wall street??

NO.

Jesus you two act like it's all unicorns with the Dems in charge.

 

You are dead on correct about them hiring part-timers to get around shit.

And the Democrats are full of shit....they just allow the GOP to do their dirty work.....and vice-versa with the GOP letting the Dems do their dirty work.

 

Sorry unions had not drove those corps since they are very few. Plus the legislatures of GOP Red states are firing them right and left from state jobs. Conservatives and Republicans want regular workers to starve.

 

Fair enough, while not clear cut groups, more like an overtime/comp time spectrum, with people closest to the overtime end getting the boot first.

Good point.

 

Another thing going against employees is the "Right To Work" laws.

The average person when they hear the term "Right To Work" think it is their constitutional right to have a job....completly unaware the law is designed to benefit the employer.

Thats the type of shit they are pulling on the ignorant mass'

 

The 'too big to fail' meme started when Dubya signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in 2008 before he left office. That was the $700 billion bailout to Wall Street, no strings attached(no interest on the re-payments required).

Obama signed the economic recovery and stimulus package into law.

Let's get our bad guys associated with the right crime.lol

LOL at how right wing radio blames Obama for the bailout AND the stimulus package.

 

Andreboba, the meme didn't start with Bush. It's history goes back to Stewart McKinney.

Obama's Admin clearly (re)perpetuated it this year by declaring it. See for yourself -


On March 6, 2013, United States Attorney General Eric Holder testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the size of large financial institutions has made it difficult for the Justice Department to bring criminal charges when they are suspected of crimes, because such charges can threaten the existence of a bank and therefore their interconnectedness may endanger the national or global economy.

"Some of these institutions have become too large,” Holder told the Committee, “It has an inhibiting impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate," contradicting earlier written testimony from a deputy assistant attorney general who defended the Justice Department’s "vigorous enforcement against wrongdoing."

Holder has financial ties to at least one law firm benefiting from de facto immunity to prosecution, and prosecution rates against crimes by large financial institutions are at 20-year lows.

Good article on it:
Outrage
http://www.alternet.org/economy/outrage-some-banks-are-too-big-prosecute

This is good article, too...

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/big-banks-go-wrong-but-pay-a-little-price/