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Sunday, May 19, 2013

Now They Want to Take Away the 8-Hour Day and 40-Hour Week

Republicans are trying to pass an "alternative" to overtime pay. This is really about taking away the eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek. Will weekends be next? What about an "alternative" to paying workers at all?


House Republicans are pushing a bill that takes away extra pay for overtime, substituting "comp" time instead. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is the law that brought us the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek. This law does not prohibit employers from requiring workers to work over 40 hours. Instead, it gives employers an incentive to instead pay extra or hire more people, and gives employees a premium if they do have to work longer. (Note that this is also the law that brought us a minimum wage and outlawed child labor.)

There is proof that overtime pay works: workers like domestic workers and agricultural workers - jobs not covered by the FLSA - are twice as likely to have to work more than 40 hours in a week. And even with this law, Americans already work more hours than in almost any other industrialized country.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

i prefer comp time, of course it should be accrued same as ot

Anonymous said...

Can't tax comp time, one advantage

Anonymous said...

thats dumb, i need the $, thats why i work it when avaialble.

thats gonna hurt the GOV tax income by taking away OT

Anonymous said...

This will stop the practice of slow working during the week so you can get overtime on the weekend.

Anonymous said...

This just proves how out of touch DC republicans are. What a joke.

Anonymous said...

How much of this "comp time" do you think employees in small businesses actually get?? You,ve got a surprise coming....

Anonymous said...

Read the whole article nothing says the comp time will be accrued at time and a half and nothing says you will be able to use this time and it will probably expire before you get to use it.people wake up this is not a benefit you will be writhing for free you want to get rid of unions so now you lose protection from this type of thing you lose your rights to a fair wage for honest work

Anonymous said...

11:18 nice to see there is intelligent life out there.

Anonymous said...

A few weeks ago my husband was lucky enough to get 8 hours of overtime. By the time they took out taxes he made less per hour than his hourly wage. It's still extra money which is a good thing but at the same time it ticks you off that so much is taken out in taxes.

Anonymous said...

State of MD has done this for years. The dept. my friend works him, tells him he can't have overtime because there is no money in the project, but he can keep track of his "comp" time and earn that and take his time off. I tried to tell him that is not legal, but the supposedly person who oversees the dept. only allows her friends to actually have overtime, the "others" must take as comp. The local dept. is as corrupt as there ever was and the people in charge in Baltimore don't do anything about it.