Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa praised the senators who last month voted to block the Bush administration’s effort to issue new overtime rules that would take away the rights of more than eight million workers to overtime pay.

“Proponents of the overtime changes say that the current rules are outdated,” Hoffa said. “There’s nothing outdated about a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work. In fact, these changes take money out of working families’ pockets. They help greedy corporate leaders, not workers.”

The vote was 54-45 in the Senate. And on Oct. 2 the House of Representatives voted 221-203 to oppose the Bush administration’s overtime pay take-away. The bill has moved to a Senate-House Conference Committee.

The Department of Labor estimates that some 11.6 million workers earned overtime pay in 2000. Denial of access to this vital income source for families would further cripple America’s economy and shift even more power to managers and company executives.

“If employers do not have to pay overtime, or any compensation for over 40 hours, workers will be right back where they were before the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted — overworked, underpaid, and serving at the whim of their employers,” added Hoffa.

The AFL-CIO notes that the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute contends that the Bush administration’s proposed change to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) would disqualify up to more than eight million workers from their right to overtime pay. The changes would affect a broad range of workers, including nurses, journalists, police, cooks, secretaries, firefighters, dental hygienists, administrative workers, paralegals and more. The rules would broaden the exceptions to the overtime law, thus making it easier for employers to avoid paying overtime pay. In addition, virtually all workers earning more than $65,000 would be denied overtime protection.

Overtime Is a Necessity
Since the 40-hour workweek became law in 1938, many American workers have come to depend on overtime pay. In fact, overtime pay was 25 percent of the income of workers who worked overtime in 2000.

Americans work more hours than workers in any other industrialized nation, and the current overtime laws help rein in excessive work hours. More than twice as many unprotected workers work over 40 hours a week, compared to workers with overtime protection, according to the Government Accounting Office (GAO).