Flexibility on overtime rules is overdue

Nation's Business, April, 1997 by Steven Blakely

The federal law requiring cash payment for overtime work was enacted nearly 60 years ago. Under the prevailing patterns of the time, the male breadwinner would focus on the added income while his homebased wife dealt with family concerns.

That pattern of family life, of course, is long outdated. Working wives and single parents make up a substantial part of the work force.

Today's workers, male and female, are repeatedly challenged to find enough time to deal with their children's school, sports, and other activities as well as with the care of aging parents, with volunteer work, and with matters of personal concern generally.

The key to finding that time is increased flexibility in their working hours.

Despite the changing social environment, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 remains unchanged in these closing years of the 20th century. The statute, which generally applies to workers paid by the hour, mandates that employees who work more than 40 hours in the same week be paid for the overtime hours at 150 percent of their usual hourly rate.

An hourly worker might be willing to put in two extra hours on Thursday night in exchange for leaving three hours early to attend a school conference or a baseball game the following Tuesday afternoon, but current law does not allow employers and employees to make such arrangements. Under the law as it now stands, the worker can use vacation time or, if none is available, take the time off without pay.

Because of those limited options, the idea of allowing hourly workers to take time off as compensation--so called comp time--for overtime worked has strong public support. A poll commissioned by the Employment Policy Foundation, a business-supported research and education group in Washington, D.C., shows that 75 percent of Americans favor allowing workers to choose between comp time and cash payments; 57 percent of those who work overtime indicated they would sometimes choose time over cash, and 33 percent said they would choose time more often than cash. A study by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1995 showed that the top concern of working women was flexible job scheduling.

Legislation that would help workers in their effort to juggle job and personal considerations has been introduced in the U.S. Senate as the Family Friendly Workplace Act (S. 4) and in the House of Representatives as the Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1).

The basic provision of each bill would allow employers and hourly workers to agree on provision of comp time at the same rate of cash reimbursement--an hour and a half for every hour worked beyond 40 hours in the same week.

In the absence of such an agreement, the employer would have to pay cash overtime. The bill contains many other worker protections, including provisions for cashing out comp time, a worker's right to withdraw from an agreement at any time, and penalties for employers who attempt to coerce employees to sign such agreements.

The legislation would extend to the private-sector work force the same option that federal and some other government employees have had for many years.

Giving workers a comp-time alternative would ease the antiquated view of the Fair Labor Standards Act toward family priorities and end the current discrimination against the private sector on this critical issue.