Whats Happening To Overtime...

1st i'd heard of this, and speaking to some Americans i know...the 1st many people have heard of it.... including those it effects.

Source

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Lower pay, longer hours and unpredictable work schedules are some of the changes working families could face under the proposed changes to overtime.

The Bush administration proposal to loosen the rules that determine which employees are entitled to overtime pay could cut paychecks for 8 million workers, possibly including police officers, nurses, store supervisors and many others. Millions would face unpredictable work schedules and reduced pay because of an increased demand for extra hours for which employers would not have to compensate workers, according to an Economic Policy Institute report released June 26. The administration has indicated it wants to issue final regulations before the end of the year.

Under the Bush overtime scheme:

Millions of salaried workers making between $22,101 and $65,000 who now are eligible to receive overtime pay could be reclassified as executives or administrative or professional employees—and would no longer qualify for overtime pay.
Relatively low-salary earners who have supervisory responsibilities or management-related responsibilities would be penalized, as would workers with advanced education or specialized training. Some of the jobs affected could be jobs police officers, nurses, retail managers, insurance claims adjusters and medical therapists hold.
Employees not covered by the new rules also could be hurt: By reclassifying many of their workers as exempt from overtime pay, employers most likely would assign overtime only to them and eliminate overtime for other workers.
Anyone making $65,000 or more a year likely would lose overtime pay, effectively eliminating many middle-income wage earners' much-needed extra pay.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's own estimates, the Bush administration's proposed rule changes could mean between 2.1 million and 3.3 million 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.

The Bush administration claims its plan would give overtime protections to more workers by allowing anyone who earns $22,100 or less to automatically qualify for overtime pay. But many of those workers, such as fast-food employees, already are covered.

Many working families depend on overtime to pay bills—especially during the current economic recession that has resulted in stagnant and declining wages coupled with increasing costs of health care, prescription drugs, child care and other essential expenses. The Bush proposal would cut into many of those families' paychecks.

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I would recomend reading the article from the site itself, as the links in the part copy/pasted havent followed through.


The Hours worked affect many things, from Health & Safety to merely spending time with the kids....surely workers should have some sort of protection/compensation, its a little regressive removing what little compensation they do receive.

Those are, admittedly my initial thoughts, as I have only just come across the subject and have only read what it mentions on this one site.

I heard about his proposal quite a bit ago, although I haven't really looked into the details of it. I imagine it's a product of trying to stem the outsourcing of jobs from the United States: if you don't have to pay Joe time-and-a-half for working those extra hours, you're more likely to make Joe work them.

:ninja:

It takes more than just the executive branch of government to "loosen Laws" what ever that may be. It must suck to be "Pee On" who can't negotiate an employment Salary or contract.

Well my job refuses to pay overtime. We're just not allowed to go over 40 hours a week, and when we do my boss, the manager, has to take em off and apply em to the next week. (Only in the event that just about all the employees get sick or something will we ever get overtime.) They expect the two employees on salary, the manager and assistant manager to fill in any and all hours that are needed, and because they are on salary they get no compensation.

What I don't understand is the point of it. As the article says, alot of people and families rely on their overtime. So basically this is just going to make things worse, and raise the amount of people that will have to find alternate sources of income such as second jobs, loans, etc. Ah yes, the "overtime protection"..... sounds like it's just a claim to get people to back it.

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Originally posted by Rat Faced
The Hours worked affect many things, from Health & Safety to merely spending time with the kids....

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I don't think the loss of time with your kids is a small loss at all. They deserve time with you and you deserve time with them.

How did Bush become President again?

BUSH: Vote for me. I'll make sure you work longer for less money. And remember, debt is a good thing, right up there with second jobs and no health care benefits.


Please guys, think carefully about who you vote for and remember that the policy decisions made today with last for years.

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Originally posted by Mathea@15 April 2004 - 03:11
Well my job refuses to pay overtime. We're just not allowed to go over 40 hours a week,

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Did Bush call them up and make them do that ?? :D

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Originally posted by {SHELL%SHOCKED}@15 April 2004 - 04:02
Did Bush call them up and make them do that ?? :D

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I wouldn't be surprised... they are loaded but also some of the cheapest bastards around! What sucks though is there's been weeks in a row where I've done morethan 40 hours, and we had to keep putting anything over 40 aside... whereas if I had gotten to put it all on the weeks I worked I would have had a paycheck that was useful! Meh. Just figures... he's prolly scared he's gonna lose the election and so is trying to screw over the country as much as possible before he leaves office. And sadly, it will probably get passed. :(

Why is this story so suprising ?....Even the most anti american flamer on the board knows that when Bush talks about American interests it's just political speak for corporate interests. If he was concerned about jobs going overseas he would have given those tax breaks only to companies that actually did create new jobs. Bush works for corporations first..........he people are just renewable resources...

ok rant over

Some proof would nice legislative Bills or Executive Orders, or is this just wind out of some idiots lung.

Seems to me this outsourcing is kinda like the sweatshops. You get about the same product made cheaper and pay employees less. What our stupid American companies are trying to do is save money even if it hurts the working class. I won't be able to vote until after this election. What is Bush thinking. It is hard to find a job now. There needs to be some incentives to keep jobs in the U.S. I know it isn't fair to India, but we are suffering over here. I see some many off my friends losing their low paying jobs to adults who are trying to support their families. I think that there will be a major job shortage in the next year and many teens will not have jobs to help support our economy. I'm kinda pissed 'cause many of the IT jobs moved overshore and that was a major interest for me. Now I'm having to look now for another career choice. I don't work enough to get charged overtime, but I can see how it would hurt many people and make it very hard for some to meet ends.

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Originally posted by vidcc+15 April 2004 - 16:58--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (vidcc @ 15 April 2004 - 16:58)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Even the most anti american flamer on the board knows that when Bush talks about American interests it&#39;s just political speak for corporate interests. [/b]

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The fact that I wasn&#39;t mentioned by name is a bit disapointing. :lol:

Michael Moore (stop reading now if you are too closed-minded to think about this) made an interesting point in his book Downsize This&#33; about layoffs and profits:

<!--QuoteBegin-Michael Moore &#045; Downsize This&#33;
Why Doesn&#39;t GM Sell Crack?
People in the business world like to say, "Profit is supreme." They like chanting that.
"Profit is king." That&#39;s another one they like to repeat. They don&#39;t like to say, "I&#39;ll pick up the check."
That means less profit. Profit is what it&#39;s all about. When they say "the bottom line," they mean their
profit. They like that bottom line to contain a number followed by a lot of zeroes.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard some guy in a suit tell me that "a company must do whatever is
necessary to create the biggest profit possible," I would have a very big bottom line right now. Here&#39;s
another popular mantra: "The responsibility of the CEO is to make his shareholders as much money
as he can."
Are you enjoying this lesson in capitalism? I get it every time I fly on a plane. The bottom−line feeders
have all seen Roger &Me, yet they often mistake the fuselage of a DC−9 for the Oxford Debating
Society. So I have to sit through lectures ad nauseam about the beauties of our free market system.
Today the guy in the seat next to me is the owner of an American company that makes office
supplies—in Taiwan. I ask the executive, "How much is &#39;enough&#39;?"
"Enough what?" he replies.
"How much is &#39;enough&#39; profit?"
He laughs and says, "There&#39;s no such thing as &#39;enough&#39;&#33;"
"So, General Motors made nearly &#036;7 billion in profit last year—but they could make &#036;7.1 billion by
closing a factory in Parma, Ohio, and moving it to Mexico—that would be okay?"
"Not only okay," he responds, "it is their duty to close that plant and make the extra &#036;.1 billion."
110
"Even if it destroys Parma, Ohio? Why can&#39;t &#036;7 billion be enough and spare the community? Why ruin
thousands of families for the sake of &#036;.1 billion? Do you think this is moral?"
"Moral?" he asks, as if this is the first time he&#39;s heard that word since First Communion class. "This is
not an issue of morality. It is purely a matter of economics. A company must be able to do whatever it
wants to make a profit." Then he leans over as if to make a revelation I&#39;ve never heard before.
"Profit, you know, is supreme."
So here&#39;s what I don&#39;t understand: if profit is supreme, why doesn&#39;t a company like General Motors
sell crack? Crack is a very profitable commodity. For every pound of cocaine that is transformed into
crack, a dealer stands to make a profit of &#036;45,000. The dealer profit on a two−thousand−pound car is
less than &#036;2,000. Crack is also safer to use than automobiles. Each year, 40,000 people die in car
accidents. Crack, on the other hand, kills only a few hundred people a year. And it doesn&#39;t pollute.
So why doesn&#39;t GM sell crack? If profit is supreme, why not sell crack?
GM doesn&#39;t sell crack because it is illegal. Why is it illegal? Because we, as a society, have
determined that crack destroys people&#39;s lives. It ruins entire communities. It tears apart the very
backbone of our country. That&#39;s why we wouldn&#39;t let a company like GM sell it, no matter what kind of
profit they could make.
If we wouldn&#39;t let GM sell crack because it destroys our communities, then why do we let them close
factories? That, too, destroys our communities.
As my frequent−flier friend would say, "We can&#39;t prevent them from closing factories because they
have a right to do whatever they want to in order to make a profit."
No, they don&#39;t. They don&#39;t have a "right" to do a lot of things: sell child pornography, manufacture
chemical weapons, or create hazardous products that could conceivably make them a profit. We can
enact laws to prevent companies from doing anything to hurt us.
And downsizing is one of those things that is hurting us. I&#39;m not talking about legitimate layoffs, when
a company is losing money and simply doesn&#39;t have the cash reserves to pay its workers. I&#39;m talking
about companies like GM, AT and GE, which fire people at a time when the company is making record
profits in the billions of dollars. Executives who do this are not scorned, picketed, or arrested—they
are hailed as heroes&#33; They make the covers of Fortune and Forbes. They lecture at the Harvard
Business School about their success. They throw big campaign fund−raisers and sit next to the
President of the United States. They are the Masters of the Universe simply because they make huge
profits regardless of the consequences to our society.
Are we insane or what? Why do we allow this to happen? It is wrong to make money off people&#39;s
labor and then fire them after you&#39;ve made it. It is immoral for a CEO to make millions of dollars when
he has just destroyed the livelihood of 40,000 families. And it&#39;s just plain nuts to allow American
companies to move factories overseas at the expense of our own people.
When a company fires thousands of people, what happens to the community? Crime goes up, suicide
goes up, drug abuse, alcoholism, spousal abuse, divorce—everything bad spirals dangerously
upward. The same thing happens with crack. Only crack is illegal, and downsizing is not. If there was
a crack house in your neighborhood, what would you do? You would try to get rid of it&#33;
I think it&#39;s time we applied the same attitudes we have about crack to corporate downsizing. It&#39;s
simple: if it hurts our citizens, it should be illegal. We live in a democracy. We enact laws based on
what we believe is right and wrong. Murder? Wrong, so we pass a law making it illegal. Burglary?
Wrong, and we attempt to prosecute those who commit it. Two really big hairy guys from Gingrich&#39;s
office pummel me after they read this book? Five to ten in Sing Sing.
As a society, we have a right to protect ourselves from harm. As a democracy, we have a
responsibility to legislate measures to protect us from harm.
[/quote]

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Originally posted by Alex H@15 April 2004 - 16:31
The fact that I wasn&#39;t mentioned by name is a bit disapointing. :lol:

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well, call me gullible, but i believe that anti american flaming is directed at the government and not the average american citizen :D

A very witty article by Mr. Moore, i must make time to watch the bowling film. It may be way out there in it&#39;s comparisons but it does make an interesting point. :lol: I do doubt however that it would be taken seriously by many, i mean some people still insist that canibis is bad and they argue it over their alcoholic beverage :lol: