NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - This being an election year, President Bush this month dusted off an old proposal aimed at making life a little easier for employees who earn overtime pay.
Bush called on Congress to amend the core federal law that gives workers basic rights like minimum wage and overtime. The Fair Labor Standards Act, he declared in a statement, should be revised to give private sector employees who earn time-and-a-half the option of taking compensatory time, or extra time off, instead.
The law currently permits only public sector employees to take comp time instead of time-and-a-half for working more than 40 hours in a workweek.
"American workers need more options and flexibility to arrange their work schedules," said Bush, pointing in particular to the rise of dual-income families.
On their face, flexible work schedules sound innocuous enough. In truth, the issue is anything but benign.
"Flexibility makes all the sense in the world (and Bush's proposal) has all the right-sounding words," said Thomas Kochan, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. But employee advocates, especially labor unions, "will be strongly opposed."
The brewing battle comes amid a precarious climate for jobs. Last month, U.S. companies added just 32,000 jobs, well below economist forecasts and the slowest monthly increase since December.
Meanwhile, new federal rules governing overtime pay are set to take effect Monday. The changes, which cover who's eligible for time-and-a-half and who is not, have angered labor groups, who contend that some 6 million workers will lose their right to overtime.
Business groups and the Bush administration dispute such claims, arguing instead that 1.3 million employees will now be eligible for extra pay for workweeks that exceed 40 hours.
Federal overtime rules have long been confusing. While the new regulations seek to clarify some of the complexity, classifications are still difficult to understand, because the criteria used to determine eligibility hinge not just on salary levels, but also on job duties.
Thus, how employers -- and possibly the courts -- will now categorize which jobs qualify for overtime will determine whether the Bush administration or labor groups are right.
The downside to overtime
Underlying the debate over who gets overtime and who doesn't is the assumption that earning time-and-a-half for extra hours worked is a benefit all employees want.
Turns out there's a small, but growing, number of U.S. workers for whom a fatter paycheck isn't the sole, or even primary, issue.
"I think we take for granted that everybody just wants to make more money," said Robin Ryan, a Seattle-based career counselor and author of several job guides.
Some workers, especially middle-income earners and those who didn't have to track time in prior jobs, view overtime-eligible jobs as somehow less professional than non-overtime positions.
A bigger downside is the loss of workday flexibility, an issue that's of particular concern to dual-income parents and single mothers.
Technically speaking, overtime workers who take two hours to go to the doctor or leave work early because a babysitter flaked doesn't get paid for the hours lost. Employers, of course, could let them make up the time later, but companies are required to pay them time-and-a-half if they do it during a normal 40-hour workweek.
In some locales like California, where state law trumps federal rules, it's even harder to pull off a flexible schedule. Unlike the federal 40-hour work week, California's overtime statutes follow an 8-hour workday. So if an overtime employee logs 40 hours in a single week, but worked 10 hours on one of those days, she's owed overtime for those two extra hours.
"Before they want a raise," explained Ryan, "most of the people I deal with . . . want flexibility in their work time."
Accountemps, a temp agency for finance workers, recently conducted a workplace survey that listed flexible scheduling as the No. 1 benefit employees want most, ahead of retirement savings plans and health care.
Similarly, the Society for Human Resource Management, in its 2004-2005 forecast, pegged employee demands for fluid schedules as the third most-significant workplace trend, behind rising health care costs and smaller human resource staffs.
Flexible is easier said than done
Given the passion on both sides, the administration's push for workplace flexibility is bound to be controversial.
Labor unions so far have blocked prior efforts in Congress to enact comp-time laws for private sector workers. According to MIT's Kochran, the overriding concern is that bosses will use what's supposed to be a perk to exploit employees.
"Is it the employer who controls whether an employee gets to take comp time or overtime or the employee?" asks Kochan. "When unions hear 'flexibility' they hear employers (not workers) get the flexibility to schedule the work."
Moreover, industries that rely heavily on overtime to meet their needs, whether its an automobile maker stepping up production to meet demand or hospitals dealing with a nursing shortage, aren't so keen on the idea of letting employees take time off instead of working longer hours.
"There's no (way) to write one set of rules that's going to fit all circumstances," said Kochan. "There are tradeoffs and not everybody is always happy."
No wonder it took 20 years and five presidents to rewrite federal overtime rules.
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