Bush Stiffs Workers on Overtime

[Sparx]

Bush Stiffs Workers on Overtime

While touting the economy this month, President Bush said, "A more productive
worker makes more money"
But if he has his way on new overtime regulations,
that will no longer be the case for tens of thousands of workers.

In a move designed to blur the issue, the Administration today said it was
revising its previous effort to terminate overtime protections for 8 million
workers. But even by the Bush Administration's own admission, the "new"
regulations will mean that tens of thousands of lower-income workers will be cutoff.
Opponents of the Administration's plan say that the revisions would still
cause problems for mean millions. The regulations are so bad for workers that
some state legislatures have even rushed through legislation to block them.

The new overtime regulations come just four months after AP reported that the
Bush Labor Department began "giving employers tips on how to avoid paying
overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers"5. The Administration
specifically told employers they could "cut workers' hourly wages and add the
overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100
annual threshold, making them ineligible." Labor Secretary Elaine Chao testified
before Congress that too many workers were filing "needless litigation" in
efforts to force employers to pay them back wages6. Her insult to workers belied
the fact that judges have ordered the government to "collect more than $212
million in back pay for workers" - the most in a decade and a strong signal that
the efforts to fight worker abuse are far from "needless."



Sources:


President Announces New Education Initiatives for Stronger Workforce,
04/06/2004.
"8 million may lose OT pay", CNN Money, 06/27/2003.
"Administration to Revise Overtime Plan", New York Times, 04/20/2004.
"Senate votes to preserve overtime pay", Associated Press, 04/16/2004.
"U.S. offers tips on avoiding overtime pay", MSNBC, 01/05/2004.
"More workers filing overtime-pay lawsuits", Seattle Times, 04/11/2004.

 

[FromTexas]

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/esa/ESA2004722.htm

“When workers know their rights and employers know how to pay workers, everybody wins,” added Chao. “With the ‘FairPay’ rule, we are restoring overtime to what it was intended to be: fair pay for workers, instead of a lawsuit lottery. And we will use these new clear standards to vigorously enforce the overtime laws on behalf of workers—building on this Administration’s strong record of pro-worker wage and hour enforcement.”

The new rules expand the number of workers eligible for overtime by nearly tripling the salary threshold. Under the 50-year-old regulations, only workers earning less than $8,060 annually were guaranteed overtime. Under the new rules, workers earning $23,660 or less are guaranteed overtime. This strengthens overtime protection for 6.7 million low-wage salaried workers, including 1.3 million salaried white collar workers who were not entitled to overtime pay under the existing regulations. These workers will gain up to $375 million in additional earnings every year.

BZZZZZT!!! Try again!

Only took me 3 minutes to read that and discredit it -- do I get a cookie?

 

[Larry Gude]

Clinton gives workers...

...stiff one. Kerry seeks recipe. Tear-a-za says "No, dummy...a different kind of stiff one!"

Sen. Kerry says..."Oh. You mean...ho ha huh! Come here my little rich Cherie! You means like zees...Mwuh! Mwuh! Mwuh!...? Eh he he, mah little turtle dove...!!"

She playfully knocks all the Senators front teeth out. He recieves 7 more Purple Hearts.

Developing...

 

[Sparx]

BZZZZZT!!! Try again!

You better research it a little more before you take chow's opinion on anything. You believe everything she says?
NO COOKIE FOR YOU

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by Sparx
BZZZZZT!!! Try again!

You better research it a little more before you take chow's opinion on anything. You believe everything she says?
NO COOKIE FOR YOU

Are you losing your OT?

 

[Pete]

Why is it so hard to grasp that the lowest income bracket for OT was increased almost 4 fold adding over 6M people?

Why are you on this like a pit bull for months even though your every attempt at villifying GW and Labor Dept is stuffed back down your throat like a faked travel voucher?

Why do you come here everyday, spam some then duck and run?

Do you think anyone here believes you or the leftist propaganda mill where you are issued your daily info?

Do you think anyone here is stupid enough to fal into your "Scare them enough they will vote for Kerry" democrat tactics?

Do you think you are going to convert anyone here to a democrat with your weak asses showings?

What is your purpose? To stir things up? To sit back and giggle when the hornets attack? Are you the newsman who is coming over to save us?

I think you are a stooge who likes to get called names and thrashed, a sadist because there is no other reason for you to poke your tinfoil hat wearing head in here daily and spout then run away.

People like you have all but convinced me that being a liberal is in fact not a political stance but more like a birth defect.

 

[Sparx]

Originally posted by Pete
Are you losing your OT?

Nope, I'm a salary employee. But I know many people who will.

 

[FromTexas]

Oh, yes. The strawman of I know people who will suffer.

Here is the crux of the argument in your post at the top - lets break it down:

The Administration
specifically told employers they could "cut workers' hourly wages and add the
overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100
annual threshold, making them ineligible."

The first one = telling employers to be more responsible. If they can't afford overtime and its hurting them, then they should be paying salaries they can afford to pay. If people do not want those salaries, they can go elsewhere. It does not mean they can go below the fed minimum $5.15. At 40 hours a week that would be $10,712. Under the old plan, those people weren't guaranteed overtime. Now, under the new plan, employers are told to pay smart because they will now be forced to pay overtime from that $10,712 to $22,100 -- so, what does the administration do? Advise them to pay smart. If the company can't afford what they had been doing, then they need to pay less - common sense. I guess your logic would be to say -- you must pay the same salaries, and because we are now going to make this increase, your payrolls are going to increase 30-40% and you have no right to try and control your costs so you don't go out of business. It is only fair to warn businesses this is what will happen.

If people don't like that salary, they can go elsewhere. These same people weren't getting overtime before -- so, now they are getting lower wage plus overtime which equals the same pay. I doubt they are going to be crying over same pay for the same work they had been doing. It still can't lower much because of federal minimums.

On the number 2 part - So, everyone gets a raise beyond what they were paid the last year! Yaaaay! People now paid up to $10.62 an hour get overtime guaranteed!!! Remember, the people referred to weren't getting overtime before, so now they are getting a guaranteed raise.

Now, also remember that most everyone paid overtime anyway. Even above and beyond the overtime rules - they either received comp time or overtime. Comp time is time off 1:1, which is even better then overtime. I get paid my salary for an hour, and I can take an hour off of my choice and get paid for it later.

And one final point -- If you want to make it strict where they can not reduce pay or find other means of compensating, then all you will have is employers laying off workers to reduce costs you have just created. Thats what we need to do, make them assume the new cost and not be able to control it somehow so they can fire people!

Now, go get the next bit of info from your handlers, so we can send you crawling back into your dark corner again. A good sign for Republicans is how you post and run. All you can do is demonstrate that you can not think for yourself. You need someone else to find the words for you, and then you don't even understand the words enough to truly argue. You throw up crap like:

you better research it a little more before you take chow's opinion on anything. You believe everything she says?
NO COOKIE FOR YOU

Without ever making a large, well thought out post. Keep being one of the herd! I am sure they will tell you what to think next, too.





Simple question -- who lost overtime in the above argument?

 

[Tonio]

Originally posted by Sparx
Bush Works Overtime Keeping It Stiff

 

[Sparx]

The first one = telling employers to be more responsible. If they can't afford overtime and its hurting them, then they should be paying salaries they can afford to pay. If people do not want those salaries, they can go elsewhere. It does not mean they can go below the fed minimum $5.15. At 40 hours a week that would be $10,712. Under the old plan, those people weren't guaranteed overtime.

There's where they confuse you and you are wrong. The FLSA requires ALL hours over 40 in a work week to be paid at 1-1/2 times the regular hourly rate unless you are considered exempt by the FLSA

 

[FromTexas]

Originally posted by Sparx
The first one = telling employers to be more responsible. If they can't afford overtime and its hurting them, then they should be paying salaries they can afford to pay. If people do not want those salaries, they can go elsewhere. It does not mean they can go below the fed minimum $5.15. At 40 hours a week that would be $10,712. Under the old plan, those people weren't guaranteed overtime.

There's where they confuse you and you are wrong. The FLSA requires ALL hours over 40 in a work week to be paid at 1-1/2 times the regular hourly rate unless you are considered exempt by the FLSA

Where is my point differing from yours? Aren't we talking about only those effected? This law does not take away from FLSA in any way, shape, or form.

This isn't effecting anyone who already receives overtime.

Would you like to further weaken your argument by just taking the whole working class? A majority of which are covered by overtime both before and after this? Seems to me you wouldn't want to be discussing all of those people already paid overtime who are unaffected.

 

[Sparx]

Originally posted by Pete
HELLO GOMER !! FLSA has a bazzilion exemptions from OT dating all the way back to about 1934, farm workers, part time, salesman, IT managers, supervisors. This simply updates it.

No kidding I agree there are exeptions that's why I mentioned it. As far as simply updating it.....thats what bush and chow want everyone to believe. If they are YOUR HANDLERS and you believe everything they say I feel sorry for your simple ASS.

 

[FromTexas]

Originally posted by Sparx
No kidding I agree there are exeptions that's why I mentioned it. As far as simply updating it.....thats what bush and chow want everyone to believe. If they are YOUR HANDLERS and you believe everything they say I feel sorry for your simple ASS.

Who lost overtime?

You can't answer the simple question.

I should specify actually -- what lower income workers lost overtime? That is the crux of your post.

There were a lot of high income workers included in the modification to exemptions. People who were salaried, higher level workers.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by FromTexas
Who lost overtime?

You can't answer the simple question.

Simple fact is Ot is pretty rare to begin with. Most employers limit it or figure a way to make employees exempt. In 1939 the FLSA was crafted to stop sweat shops. We don't have sweat shops here anymore we use overseas sweat shops. People typically began exploiting the FLSA. This update raises the old ceiling to include more workers and removes OT protection from those who do not toil in sweatshop type jobs.

Remove protections from the upper wage earners to extend it to the lower hourly workers. Hmmm sound ok to me. It is the typical lib mantra, this time when a Republican does it they complain. Typical lib if a republican threw them a suprise b-day party they would biatch because the candles were too small and the hats were the wrong color.

Sparx, You keep screaming your blither at the top of your lungs and the people will see you for the hack you really are.

Why do you come here anyway?

 

[FromTexas]

Originally posted by Pete
Simple fact is Ot is pretty rare to begin with. Most employers limit it or figure a way to make employees exempt. In 1939 the FLSA was crafted to stop sweat shops. We don't have sweat shops here anymore we use overseas sweat shops. People typically began exploiting the FLSA. This update raises the old ceiling to include more workers and removes OT protection from those who do not toil in sweatshop type jobs.

Remove protections from the upper wage earners to extend it to the lower hourly workers. Hmmm sound ok to me. It is the typical lib mantra, this time when a Republican does it they complain. Typical lib if a republican threw them a suprise b-day party they would biatch because the candles were too small and the hats were the wrong color.

Sparx, You keep screaming your blither at the top of your lungs and the people will see you for the hack you really are.

Why do you come here anyway?

Exactly, but his post does not suggest (at the top) that this is going from higher to lower wages. It is suggesting that it is effecting lower income folks in their normal jobs.

Anybody paid over a certain income pretty much hasn't had overtime for awhile. They get salaried instead, thrown comp time, or otherwise. This actually increased protections for the "white collar" class of worker. It did not steal from lower income workers in any way.

 

[Sparx]

Why do you come here anyway?

AWW come on, having a common enemy brings you all closer together

 

[Sparx]

After patrolling the streets of Toledo, Ohio, police officer Tim Steedman looks forward to spending his time off with his two sons. Because the proposed Department of Labor rules change could mean the city won’t have to pay time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours, Steedman, a single father, worries his employer might start demanding he work overtime. “We’re at least 70 officers short now,” he explains. “If the city doesn’t have to pay time-and-half, it’ll force us in to work all the time.”

As an employee of a Norwalk, Ohio, auto parts manufacturer that often does not allow workers to take earned vacation time, UNITE member Robert Kurtycz has circulated a petition among co-workers and neighbors opposing congressional legislation that would encourage employers to offer compensatory time instead of overtime pay, plus give them control over when workers take that time.

“If the Republicans were really concerned about giving families flexibility, they’d say employees can take their comp time whenever they want—but that’s not the way the bills are written,” says Kurtycz, 25, the father of two small children.

A proposed change in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations could immediately hurt household finances for Kurtycz. His wife, Holley, a full-time nurse at a nonunion workplace, would become exempt from federal overtime pay protections under a Bush administration proposal and might lose as much as 25 percent of her income if it goes into effect. “This would greatly affect our household finances,” says Kurtycz.

For the coming five years, Kurtycz’s contract protects his rights to overtime pay. “But when our contract comes up the next time, my employer will probably argue that in order to compete with nonunion employers that give comp time rather than overtime, it’s going to have to give comp time, too,” he explains. “Another major problem is that if a company goes bankrupt, everything workers are owed is not protected by anything.”

If proposed Bush administration changes to overtime regulations go through, Sheila Perez, a highly trained federal government employee who tests and maintains submarine systems at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, might be reclassified as “exempt” from those overtime rules. In that case, her pay for more than 40 hours of work a week would go from time-and-a-half to less than straight time. Now facing a transfer to a job that may require up to 500 hours of annual mandatory overtime and 10-hour, 7-day weeks, Perez is concerned a pay cut may accompany this strenuous new schedule. “Many of us are 45 and older, and you’re talking about a lot of stress on the body,” she says. “After 40 hours a week, why should we make less than straight time? It makes no sense to me.”

As a member of PACE International Union Local 8-675, David Taylor, a highly skilled refinery worker at Lyondell-Citgo Refining LP (LCR) in Houston, is covered by a union contract that protects his overtime pay. But if proposed Bush administration changes in overtime regulations take effect, he and other oil industry workers in similar jobs could be reclassified as “exempt” from laws requiring pay for overtime work. If that happens, the nonunion workers could lose their legal rights to time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours of work a week. And in future contract negotiations, union employers like LCR probably would try to take back overtime pay, says Taylor. “In bargaining, their statements are always laced with what other companies are doing and how they have to do the same,” explains Taylor, who estimates his gross income would fall by about 25 percent without overtime pay. But employer demands for more than 40 hours of work a week likely would continue, he predicts, resulting in a pay cut.

“When my co-workers were hired, they were asked if they had any problem with mandatory overtime, and then they based their futures and standard of living on that overtime,” Taylor says. “The house you buy, whether your wife has to work, whether you can send your kids to Texas A&M or they have to attend the community college—for many of us, it’s all been determined by overtime, and now they want to change the rules in the middle of the game.”


Engineering technician Robert Gaudette performs industrial safety and testing work on submarines for the federal Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. “It’s dirty and demanding industrial work, and the schedule is unforgiving,” he says. Because Gaudette is highly skilled, a Bush administration proposal could, if enacted, reclassify him as exempt from FLSA’s overtime pay protections. He would be paid straight time rather than time-and-a-half for working more than 40 hours weekly—causing him to lose about 9 percent of his current annual income. But, like his co-workers, Gaudette still would be expected to work overtime, between 500 and 700 hours annually—some of them aboard submarines at sea for days at a time. And according to the federal government’s pay schedule, he could earn nothing for every hour after 49 hours of overtime per each two-week pay period. Gaudette took his current position in 1991 largely because the mandatory overtime at time-and-a-half looked like the best way to eventually finance college education for his then-young sons, Jeffrey and James. They’ll both be in college next year and he’ll need $39,000 toward their tuitions—money he won’t have if his income goes down. His only solution, if the Bush administration proposal goes through, is to ask for a demotion to a lower-paying job with no overtime, so he can work elsewhere nights and weekends as an electrician.



Patrolman Tim Schortgen in Defiance, Ohio, says he’ll lose about $2,000 annually in overtime pay if the proposed Department of Labor changes to overtime rules go through. “That’s a big reduction,” he says. “Money I can’t put toward my daughter Adrian’s college education. This comes down to protecting the 40-hour workweek. With homeland security needs increasing demands on state and local security, we’re being asked to work longer, for less.”

 

[Pete]

Originally cut and pasted by Sparx because he does not have original thought he just copies

Patrolman Tim Schortgen in Defiance, Ohio, says he’ll lose about $2,000 annually in overtime pay if the proposed Department of Labor changes to overtime rules go through. “That’s a big reduction,” he says. “Money I can’t put toward my daughter Adrian’s college education. This comes down to protecting the 40-hour workweek. With homeland security needs increasing demands on state and local security, we’re being asked to work longer, for less.”

A LIE, he will not lose $2K annually, he will just not get that over and above his regular pay. OT is not mandatory, and he might be asked to or he can be given comp time. Poor officer Schortgen needs to learn to 1. Manage finances better like the rest of us, 2. Get a PT job to make up the wopping $2K a year, 3. Tell little Adrian to get a student loan.

Although this article says he will lose $2K it doesn't say what he makes a year either. If he is losing $2K from a $20K annual salary you bet your sweet ass they would have used it in the article to well up tears. I have a feeling that losing $2K a year in OT for someone making $60K would get less sympathy. Tricklery from the lefty press, nah that wouldn't do that.

I also liked how little Adrian's college was used. If old Officer Tim would have siad "Well you know now I am going to have to wait until next spring to but that hot tub." it wouldn't have made the paper.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by Sparx
After patrolling the streets of Toledo, Ohio, police officer Tim Steedman looks forward to spending his time off with his two sons. Because the proposed Department of Labor rules change could mean the city won’t have to pay time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours, Steedman, a single father, worries his employer might start demanding he work overtime. “We’re at least 70 officers short now,” he explains. “If the city doesn’t have to pay time-and-half, it’ll force us in to work all the time.”

He might win the GD lottery too and stop working altogether. If he is worried about not spending time with his kids, GET A DIFFERENT JOB, adults have to make decisions all the time. Cake=eat

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by Sparx

A proposed change in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations could immediately hurt household finances for Kurtycz. His wife, Holley, a full-time nurse at a nonunion workplace, would become exempt from federal overtime pay protections under a Bush administration proposal and might lose as much as 25 percent of her income if it goes into effect. “This would greatly affect our household finances,” says Kurtycz.

Full time nurse, now there is a sweat shop job if I have ever heard of one. Sounds like someone has come to rely on 25% of their income coming from OT....STUPID MOVE !!