The AFL-CIO charged that proposals by the Bush administration and Congress to revise federal wage and hour laws will rob millions of workers of overtime pay.

The combination of those proposals and another proposal in the Senate to eliminate the 40-hour workweek add up to "the biggest threats to working families' paychecks in years," the AFL-CIO said.

GCIU Vice Pres. Lawrence Martinez, who directs General Board legislative activities, urged GCIU members to contact their representatives, senators, and the White House to oppose these attacks on workers' paychecks and families.

"Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt built wage and hour protections to give families a fair deal in their workplaces," Martinez said. "Now, the Bush administration, Republican congressional leaders, and their corporate sponsors have come up with a scheme to allow employers to avoid paying for overtime. Their scheme will result in longer hours, lower incomes, and less predictable workweeks for American families while employers line their pockets at the expense of working families. We must stop them."

The Bush administration's proposed regulatory changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) would raise the income ceiling from $156 a week to $425 a week – $22,100 a year. Workers earning less than that would automatically qualify for overtime pay. It also would establish a new classification system for job duties that would exempt workers from overtime pay.

The Department of Labor said its proposed revisions "will help small businesses grow and guarantee overtime pay for 1.3 million more low-wage workers."

However, the AFL-CIO said most of the low-income workers that the administration cites are already covered by overtime protections because of the nature of their jobs.

In contrast, the AFL-CIO said the Bush overtime proposals would eliminate overtime for "many more hundreds of thousands" of workers by:

• Excluding previously protected workers by reclassifying them as managers, administrative or professional employees who are not eligible for overtime pay.
• Eliminating certain middle-income workers from overtime protections by adding an income limit above which workers no longer qualify for overtime.
• Removing overtime protections for large numbers of workers in aerospace, defense, health care, high tech, and other industries.

The AFL-CIO said: "Many working families depend on overtime pay to balance their checkbooks and pay bills – especially during the current economic recession that has resulted in stagnant and declining wages, increasing costs of health care, prescription drugs, child care, gasoline, and other everyday expenses. The Bush proposal would cut into many of those families' paychecks."

The Bush proposal also is unfriendly to families, the AFL-CIO pointed out, because it would "mean that many workers would face unpredictable work schedules because of an increased demand for extra hours for which employers would not have to pay time and a half."

In Congress, H.R.1119 in the House and S.317 in the Senate would allow employers to offer compensatory time off to workers in place of normal time-and-a-half overtime pay. A separate provision in S.317 would eliminate the 40-hour week and substitute an 80-hour two-week work period. Workers who work 50 hours in one week, for example, would not receive any overtime pay or comp time, the AFL-CIO noted.

Ellen Bravo, director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, told the House Workforce Protections subcommittee that H.R.1119 claims that it is employees who decide to accept comp time instead of paid overtime. But "this ignores the reality that most workers have no say in their hours or working conditions," Bravo said.

Ross Eisenbrey, vice president and policy director of the non-profit Economic Policy Institute, said: "Not only will employees who substitute comp time earn less; so will employees who refuse comp time and insist on being paid for their overtime at the time they work it. Employers will assign overtime preferentially to those who accept comp time, thereby depriving the workers who need the extra cash of overtime work."

Eisenbrey noted that H.R.1119 would give employers a big cash break. "An employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until a year later, at the employer's discretion," he said.

Bravo said the legislation "does nothing to address the problem of mandatory overtime. In fact, by making it possible for employers not to pay for overtime and instead offer comp time at some later date convenient for the employer, this bill provides an incentive to require workers to endure long hours on the job."