hen I started in the newspaper business I made so
little money I had to work part time in my father's upholstery shop to
make ends meet. So I'd spend the days chasing stories and struggling with
deadlines, and the nights wrestling with beat-up sofas and chairs.
Then the editors at The Star-Ledger in Newark began asking me to work
overtime on the copy desk, dreaming up headlines and doing some editing.
The extra time-and-a-half pay was just enough to keep me solvent and out
of the upholstery shop. And the copy desk experience was invaluable.
Now suppose the editors had been able to tell me to work the extra
hours on the copy desk without paying me overtime. I couldn't have
afforded to do it, and might have left the paper.
The Bush administration, which has the very bad habit of smiling at
working people while siphoning money from their pockets, is trying to
change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in a way that could cause
millions of workers to lose their right to overtime pay.
The act, one of the last major domestic reform measures of the New
Deal, gave Americans the 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage (which began
at 25 cents an hour in the late 1930's). It wiped out grueling 12-hour
days for many workers and prohibited the use of child labor in interstate
commerce.
The act's overtime regulations have not been updated since 1975, and
part of what the administration is proposing makes sense. Under existing
rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify
for overtime. That would be raised to $22,100 a year.
But then comes the bad news. Nearly 80 percent of all workers are in
jobs that qualify them for overtime pay, which is time-and-a-half for each
hour that is worked beyond the normal 40-hour week. The administration
wants to make it easier for employers to exempt many of those workers from
overtime protection by classifying them as administrative, professional or
executive personnel.
The quickest way to determine who is getting the better of this deal is
to note that business groups are applauding the proposed changes while the
A.F.L.-C.I.O. held a protest rally outside the Labor Department on
Monday.
But this is an administration that could figure out a way to sell
sunblock to a night crawler. So the rules changes are being spun as a boon
to working people.
"By recognizing the professional status of skilled employees, the
proposed regulation will provide them a guaranteed salary and flexible
hours," said Tammy McCutchen, the Labor Department's wage and hour
administrator.
All spinning aside, I wonder how many Americans really think that
working longer hours for less money is a good thing.
A more helpful approach to the issue was offered by the Economic Policy
Institute, which found that the proposed changes could ultimately
eliminate the right to overtime for eight million people. That represents
an awful lot of cash that would be drawn away from working families.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing the Bush administration is
committed to — undermining a hard-won initiative of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's that has helped many millions of working Americans for more
than six decades. It ain't broke, but George Bush is busy fixin' it.
You would think that an administration that has presided over the loss
of millions of jobs might want to strengthen the protections of workers
fortunate enough to still be employed. But that's not what this
administration is about.
Jared Bernstein, a co-author of the study by the Economic Policy
Institute, said, "The new rules are structured in such a way as to create
a very strong incentive for employers to exempt workers from overtime
protection, primarily by converting hourly workers to salaried
workers."
One of the workers who joined Monday's protest at the Labor Department
was Bob Adams, a bakery manager at a supermarket chain in Minneapolis and
St. Paul.
When I asked him why he had traveled to Washington for the
demonstration, he said: "Because I think we have to put a stop to this.
There seems to be a systematic assault on the rights of workers by this
administration, and this is a perfect example of it. They tried to push
this through as quietly as they could."
