[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 79 (Monday, June 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5406-S5412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FAMILY FRIENDLY WORKPLACE ACT
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, for the next 15 minutes or so, since we
are talking about vetoes, I would like to talk about the Family
Friendly Workplace Act, S. 4. This is a piece of legislation that has
been authored by the good Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft,
myself, and others. It is designed to make the workplace a friendlier
place, a more flexible place. Lo and behold, in the middle of the
debate, the President has announced to the country he would have to
veto this bill, which is as puzzling as his veto of this emergency
relief. He has said he would have to veto the act. We have had a
filibuster underway on this Family Friendly Workplace Act. We have
tried to break the filibuster twice and have failed to do so because of
the supporters of the President on the other side of the aisle.
If you want to know what the American public thinks about this kind
of legislation, you just need to go talk to them. In a survey for Money
magazine in May of this year, 64 percent of the public and 68 percent
of women would prefer time off to overtime pay if they had the choice,
which they do not. The Federal workers, since 1978, have had this
choice, but not these hourly laborers. If they had the choice, they
would prefer time off to overtime pay. That is what the Family Friendly
Workplace Act is about. It is about giving employees and their
employers the voluntary--underscore voluntary--option to design
programs to meet this desire.
A Penn & Schoen survey found that 75 percent support the choice of
time off in lieu of overtime pay. President Clinton's own Labor
Department has reported that help in balancing the needs of work and
family is the No. 1 need among working American women. You would think,
given what we have seen and the stress that is being pounded upon the
average American family, we would be stepping forward with legislation
such as S. 4, and trying to create a system in the workplace that
allows these working families to meet their special needs and to adjust
the time they need to juggle between family and the workplace.
Mr. President, I see we have been joined by the distinguished Senator
from Wyoming, who has been an advocate of the Family Friendly Workplace
Act. I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming, to share his
thoughts on this legislation with us.
Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I thank my colleague
for arranging this special order.
It seems to me that this is something that is very important. I have
watched this discussion with great interest, having had some experience
in small business, and, I must confess, I have been very surprised by
it. It seems to me that over the years, particularly the last 2\1/2\
years, we have spent in this body a great deal of time talking about
making things more family friendly. We have talked about how we could
provide more time for families to share in the schooling of their
youngsters, to share in their communities, to share in the things that
make communities strong, and to work that in to our professional lives.
Then comes a proposal to do that which allows for flextime, which
allows for comptime, and we find suddenly a great deal of opposition.
That is a puzzle to me. As I mentioned, I have been in a small business
where you don't have many employees, and I recognize from the employer
side that there has to be some communication, because you may not be
able to spare someone for a certain length of time. On the other side,
I think it is equally or perhaps even more important that the employee
is not forced by the employer to take the time differently than they
would like to. But it is my understanding and my belief that in this
bill those things are protected, that it is a cooperative agreement
between the employer and the employee, to come to these conclusions.
So I was very disappointed. Even though I haven't spoken a great deal
on it, I was very disappointed last week when we didn't get enough
votes to vote cloture. There certainly are enough votes to pass the
bill. I am disappointed that the White House has apparently indicated
the President will not sign the bill, largely as a result of the labor
unions to which the White House is so sensitive. This Family Friendly
Workplace Act would help working Americans do the things--the
[[Page S5407]]
very things--that the President has been talking about and made an
issue of in the last election and since. And then we find there is
opposition to it.
Most Americans, I believe--the Americans that I have talked to--do,
in fact, want flexibility in the workplace, would like to have the
opportunity to be able to make some adjustments. We have a business in
our town of Cheyenne. It is called Unicover. They are the ones who put
out first-day stamps, first-day covers. The owner testified before the
Senate Labor Committee a few months ago. His employees came to him and
asked for comptime/flextime so there could be some arrangements. He
wants to offer that to his employees but cannot, of course, until S. 4
is passed. I suppose this has been said--in fact, when you are
discussing an issue like this, everything has been said --but the May
1997 survey from Money magazine found 68 percent of working women would
prefer comptime to overtime pay. The Labor Department has indicated
that it would help in balancing work and attention to the family, which
is the No. 1 issue for working American women.
So I am truly puzzled by the opposition to it, and I can only imagine
that it is simply a political opposition brought on by the opposition
of the labor unions to it, which surprises me as well, because
certainly union leaders and union members want to do something with
their families as well.
Americans need the flexibility in the workplace if we are to
accomplish the things that we want to, if we are to accommodate the
fact that more and more women, more and more mothers are in the
workplace and, therefore, since both family members often are working
that there does need to be flexibility.
Our current laws go back to 1938. Most jobs were in manufacturing;
very strict. One-payroll families were the norm. That has obviously
changed to where now two-payroll families are, indeed, the norm. In
1938, 16 percent of the women with children worked outside the home; in
1997, more than 70 percent work outside the home.
This Family Friendly Workplace Act creates new choices for employees
and employers. By mutual agreement, they can agree to substitute some
alternatives for overtime, some alternatives to the 40-hour operation.
They can take time off to do the things that they need to do or bank
some hours with comptime. Federal workers, I understand, have enjoyed
this flexibility scheduling now for nearly 20 years, and they can do
that. Why not the rest of the working community? S. 4 protects workers'
rights, and that is important, very important. Penalties for direct or
indirect employer coercion are doubled from current law. Accumulated
comptime may be paid in cash by year's end.
So, Mr. President, I hope that we intend to continue to push,
continue to address S. 4 in this Congress and, hopefully, get the bill
passed. It meets the realities of the modern-day workplace, it meets
the needs of modern-day families, and is something that I think is very
favored among people in this country.
It is a little frustrating sometimes to find this kind of dilemma
that we are caught up in this week, quite frankly, a situation where if
a bill doesn't suit the President, it has to bring us to a standstill.
After all, the President is not a king; the President doesn't run the
country. He has to give as well as the Congress. That is what this is
about. Here we find another that is very similar.
I hope that we find some areas of agreement that will allow us to put
into place S. 4 and protect the rights of workers, protect the
opportunity for options, protect the opportunity for families to have a
friendly workplace. I hope we do it very soon.
Mr. President, I thank my friend for this time and for his work and
that of the Senator from Missouri on this bill. It has been exemplary.
Thank you very much. I yield the floor.
Mr. COVERDELL. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a moment.
Mr. THOMAS. Sure.
Mr. COVERDELL. It is sort of ironic that this Monday afternoon we are
beset with Presidential vetoes or threats to veto. He has indicated
that he will veto the Family Friendly Workplace Act if it includes
flextime, which is what I think most of us feel is among the more
important features, to allow working families to adjust their time.
The Senator from Wyoming has talked about compromise, but I just want
to reiterate and try to get your impression. Don't you find it unusual
that the only thing we have been met with here is a filibuster, and
that if you are really interested in creating a family workplace work
environment, wouldn't you think we would be getting suggested new
language or something that might compromise, instead of sort of a
straight-arm and voting down attempts to end the filibuster?
Mr. THOMAS. I say to the Senator, I think that is curious. If you
have an issue where you are on different sides of the issue and opposed
to one another, then you get this kind of thing. But here is one where,
if you went around and talked about opportunities to have some choices
in the workplace, if you talked about a way to allow people to have
some flextime with their families, everybody would agree, nobody would
disagree with that.
So it is strange that having that as the premise, having that as the
basis that we find instead of searching for a way to make it work, as
you say, it becomes an absolute stoppage of anything happening. It is
curious, and I am surprised. I guess that is why I am here expressing
some surprise in the way this has turned.
Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Wyoming. As usual, he has
contributed substantially to the discussion.
Mr. President, in my opening remarks, I spoke of the percentage of
working women who would prefer time off to overtime pay if they had a
choice, which they don't. That is what we are trying to create here.
I read this very interesting article from the Radcliffe Public Policy
Institute, ``Work and Family Integration.'' It is very interesting. It
says:
Economic changes have direct consequences on work and
family life.
That says it all. I have been arguing for the better part of 2 years
now that when we talk about American culture and what is happening in
the American family, we tend to point fingers to who is causing the
trouble, and Hollywood gets a pretty good dose of it. But I don't think
Hollywood holds a candle to Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam has put so much
economic pressure on the working families that it has dramatically
changed the nature of the way these families function.
It goes on to say:
It is increasingly common for all adult family members to
spend a greater number of hours at work in order to make up
for declining median family incomes to fulfill personal
career goals or to cater to growing workplace demands.
Again, I would argue, that while the median family income has
declined, the biggest culprit in absorbing those median income salaries
is the Government. In fact, by our analysis in Georgia, an average
family today forfeits 55 percent of their income after they pay direct
taxes, almost 40 percent, cost of Government regulations, $7,000 per
family, and their share of higher interest payments because of the
national debt that has been put on their backs.
That pressure needs relief in many ways. No. 1, which we are talking
about here, we need to lower the economic pressure, we need to lower
the taxes on those average families; No. 2, there should be no
impediment in the workplace that blocks working families and the
companies for whom they work from finding ways to suit and balance the
needs of these work careers and the needs at home.
This article says:
Married women with children have entered the labor force in
record numbers. They, therefore, have less time for
caregiving in the home.
They have less time. We have seen the SAT scores aren't as good,
teenage violence is worse, teenage suicide has quadrupled, and you have
to say to yourself, ``Well, if there is not as much opportunity or
attention to govern the home, you are going to have problems like this
that will begin to emerge.''
Many parents, both mothers and fathers, feel conflicted and
torn between spending time with their families and meeting
workplace demands.
This is the point I was making a moment ago: A massive amount of
pressure in both places and we are operating under a workplace that is
governed
[[Page S5408]]
by laws that are a half a century old, almost 60 years old. You think
back 60 years to 1930, the 1930 workplace. First of all, it was mostly
rural. Now it is only 2 percent that is rural. Just reflect for a
minute on the kinds of massive change that have occurred between 1930
and 1997 and you can understand that the governance in the workplace
probably, like everything else, requires some modernization.
It says work and family life should not be in opposition but should
enrich each other. Work and family life should not be in opposition but
should enrich each other. That is what this legislation is trying to
do. It is trying to allow the workplace to adjust to the different
needs that the different workers have with regard to maintaining and
governing their families.
Here is a quote:
It's like you are caught between a rock and a hard place
because if you want to have a family, you want to have a
couple of children, you can't do that unless you have lots of
money to support them. Well, you can, but you'd have to be
able to take care of them, at least provide the basics, and
in order to do that you either have to have your husband gone
all the time working so hard or working toward getting his
degree or else both of you have to be working, but the more
you're working, the less time you have with your kids, so
it's like you can't win.
That is from a young woman in her twenties in Salt Lake City.
But the more you're working, the less time you have with
your kids, so it's like you can't win.
You know, we wonder why, even with the economy doing reasonably well,
why you get so much anxiety coming out of the workplace. Well, that is
it, right there, ``But the more you're working, the less time you have
with your kids, so it's like you can't win.
So here comes S. 4 and it says you and your employer voluntarily can
make decisions and create options about what happens in the workplace
so that hopefully it can help make it possible for you both to be
working and still win. I am absolutely baffled by the threat from the
other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, ``I would have to veto this if
flextime is left in the legislation.'' That sure does not square with
anything we are seeing or reading.
I was looking at the average hours per week parents devote to
undivided child care--in other words, full blown. If the woman is
employed, it is 6.6 hours per week. If she is unemployed, it is just
under double, 12.9 hours a week, of undivided attention. It doubles.
Now, you cannot unemploy these people to get this added time. That
will not work, given what has been happening here in Washington for the
last 30 years and given the economic pressure on them, but you can
begin to modify the rules in the workplace so that there is an offset,
an opportunity to adjust.
Mr. President, we have just been joined by the senior Senator from
New Mexico, chairman of the Budget Committee and a Senator most
knowledgeable and concerned about a friendly workplace.
I yield up to 10 minutes if that is sufficient, to the Senator from
New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank you for those kind words, and, yes, that is
sufficient.
First of all, I am very proud to be a cosponsor of the Family
Friendly Workplace Act. The way I see it, this bill is long overdue for
American workers in the private sector. Federal employees have had
flextime and comptime for nearly 20 years and it is about time the
millions of American men and women who do not work for the Government
receive the same benefits.
I vigorously support this bill for the following three reasons. One,
it is fair. Federal employees currently have comptime and flextime. It
is voluntary. And it protects employees.
Times have changed since we adopted the rigid 40-hour work week.
Under current law, you cannot arrange a schedule to work 44 hours one
week and save those 4 hours to take time off in the next week to be
with your children or to do something very important to help your sick
mother or your grandmother. Current law says you cannot do that even if
you want to and your boss agree.
Federal employees have had flextime for many, many years. What we
have now found out is that Federal employees who have been
participating in flextime are highly satisfied. That should not
surprise anyone. It is a very rational and reasonable thing.
Eight out of ten workers support continuation of the program; 72
percent say they have more flexibility to spend more time with their
families and on personal needs; 74 percent said the flexible schedule
has improved their morale and made them feel better about their work
and about their employers. If comptime flextime is good enough for
Federal employees, then why not for the 80 million people that work in
the private sector of America?
For example, FBI employees have comptime and flextime. Isn't what is
good enough for them also good enough for restaurant workers, hospital
employees, hotel chain workers, telecommunication employees, and, yes,
firemen, policemen, and others who might be burdened by the 40-hour-a-
week rigid nonflexible time?
Federal workers can currently use their flextime schedules to attend
such things as a school play, baseball games, PTA meetings, dance
recitals, Boy Scout or Girl Scout meetings and activities, doctors
visits, school field trips, and dental appointments for children. As a
matter of fact, I say to my good friend, Senator Coverdell, we got
those examples from people who said this is exactly what they would
like to do and we got it from Federal employees who say this is exactly
what they are doing.
This bill, as I understand it, and I would not be supporting it
without this, is good because it is voluntary or optional. It
encourages employers and employees to work together to arrange
schedules which fit the individual needs of employees and yet provide
the management with enough opportunities to get the work done that they
need done. Nothing in this bill requires employees to adjust their work
schedules if they do not want to.
Mr. COVERDELL. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
Mr. COVERDELL. You are right now on the core dispute. You have argued
for the need in the new modern workplace for the flexible time and what
it does to morale and conflicting schedules, and you said you would not
be for this if it was not voluntary.
Mr. DOMENICI. That is correct.
Mr. COVERDELL. That would be the same for me.
As you know, if I could comment about it, not only is it voluntary,
but the legislation has strict procedures to guarantee that it is
voluntary, and there would be ramifications of severe proportions if an
employer were to do anything other than make it voluntary.
Mr. DOMENICI. No question. In fact, I was going to get to that in a
moment.
It is so voluntary that employees under this law can withdraw from a
comptime and flextime arrangement at any time. Employees can cash out
accrued hours of comptime and flextime at any time. These provisions
are going to be enforced just as rigidly as the current provisions of
the Fair Labor Standards Act.
This bill protects employees from employer misconduct because it
contains anti-coercion provisions. I would not support it if it did not
have this protection because this is what assures that it would really
be voluntary. There are always people who would like to deny employees
certain rights and some employees would like to not work as hard as
they should for their employers. We cannot correct all of that.
But obviously this law says that an employer cannot claim
inconvenience as a reason for not allowing an employee to take
comptime. Once the employer and employee have agreed to a schedule, the
employer cannot then change his mind and say it would be inconvenient
to do it that way.
As an example, an employer cannot force an employee to accept time
off rather than monetary overtime pay by promising to promote an
employee. This is investigated in the same way that the Fair Labor
Standards Act rules and regulations of today are handled on behalf of
the American workingman and in fairness to the management and
ownership.
Now I do not understand why the Democrats and labor unions are
standing in the way of bringing choice and flexibility to the American
workplace. If Democrats really cared about the
[[Page S5409]]
best interests of American workers they would stop misleading the
people about this bill and pass it.
The Baucus-Kennedy substitute amendment does not help the American
worker because it only provides comptime and does not contain the
flextime biweekly work schedule of flexible credit hours. Flextime is
very important. It is important to everyone in the workplace but most
important to women and non-overtime workers.
The combination, Mr. President, of comptime and flextime will benefit
67 percent of all working women in the private sector. Whereas
comptime, by itself, will only benefit 4.5 percent of all working women
in the private sector.
The Baucus-Kennedy bill wipes out flextime. Now, what could be more
unfair than to penalize all but 4.5 percent of the working women in
America by restructuring a bill so narrowly that only 4.5 percent are
benefited? Under the broader bill with both flextime and comptime, 67
percent of those same working women would have an option to better
their work schedule to help them with their daily lives and with their
families.
The Baucus-Kennedy substitute amendment limits accrued comptime to 80
hours a year, versus this bill's 240 hours. Doing the math, one can say
that the Republican bill is three times as flexible for the American
working people than the substitute being offered.
The Democrats, and for some reason the labor unions, falsely claim
that this bill will end the 40-hour workweek. This bill will allow
employees who want a variation of the 40-hour week to have one--
voluntarily and with no coercion. For those workers who want to keep
the standard schedule, they can. It is their option and their employers
option. They do not have to change one bit. If they like the rigidity
of 8-to-5 work with an hour off for lunch, then so be it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. COVERDELL. I yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator.
For those who want to keep the standard 40-hour workweek from the
Depression, they can keep it that way. For those of us who are yearning
to make the workplace more hospitable to our working people, for those
of us who are concerned about family life and would like to have
workers have a little more family time, we urge the labor unions to
change sides on this.
I saw a couple of my friends from the labor unions outside in the
hall and my first remark to them when I walked out was, ``Why are you
against the working women?'' Of course, we had a lot of fun after that.
But actually that is the issue.
This bill will help women more than anything else, to provide them
with flexibility and no loss of pay. This flexibility can be used to
make their lives better in the event they need family time off to take
care of things other than work.
I believe the other side of the aisle needs to listen to what the
American worker wants: flexibility. Ninety-one percent of working
mothers support flexible work schedules.
Now, frankly, there are many other reasons we could discuss here on
the floor. Until the public gets excited and worked up, and until women
start writing the labor unions and asking them: What are you doing to
us? Why don't you keep yourselves out of this issue? and, Why are you
against this? things won't change. Until there is enough foment in
society for more flexibility in the workplace, then reform will not
occur.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Mexico for
a really precise and very focused presentation on the nature of the
volunteer provisions of this legislation and the safeguards that are
built into the legislation to assure that it is indeed a voluntary
opportunity for workers and their employers.
Just a moment ago, before the Senator from New Mexico arrived, I read
this quote from Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, where this woman in
her twenties says, ``But the more you are working, the less time you
have with your kids, so it's like you can't win.'' He makes a point
that we are going to need a public furor out there because this is
good, common sense. We are trying to make it so that this 20-year-old
woman, whoever she is, can be in the workplace and can win, and can
meet the needs and issues of her family. This article goes on to say
that XYZ company--they don't name the company--is trying to figure out
how to deal with this fact. You have this 30-year-old with two kids at
home, who is not going to give you 16 hours a day, as they did when
they were in their twenties. Yet, we still want to be globally
competitive. I actually don't think we have a good answer. These
people, the ones who have opted to have kids and work less, are getting
hurt in their reviews.
See, the current work rules just don't meet the current requirements,
and you can't make it so that one shoe fits everybody. It just doesn't.
There are different pressures on the working mothers and fathers. That
is why I have been so complimentary of the Senator from Missouri for
coming forward with the family friendly workplace.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. COVERDELL. I am glad to yield to the Senator.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I asked the Senator to yield for a question, which is,
some who are opposed to this have indicated that this is a pay cut. Is
it your understanding that when a person takes time and a half off with
pay later instead of overtime pay, that that represents a pay cut? Or
is that a way to have some time off the next week without taking a pay
cut?
Mr. COVERDELL. As the Senator knows, there is nothing about this
legislation that represents, in any way, a detriment to the worker, as
in a pay cut or any other function of their work. The only thing that
happens with the passage of this is that workers have more options and
opportunities, and under no condition would it lead to a pay cut--none.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I wonder if the Senator from Georgia had the
opportunity to see the USA Today lead editorial, which says, ``Harried
Workers Need Comp Time's Flexibility.'' I was kind of interested in the
way they closed the editorial:
A choice between time off and overtime is an option that
can benefit employees and employers alike.
Their last words:
Those who stand in the way deserve a permanent vacation.
I recommend this editorial to the Senator.
Mr. COVERDELL. I have not had a chance to read the editorial. But I
say to the Senator from Missouri that in many discussions with
individuals with whom I have not necessarily been philosophically
together in the past, they think your legislation is correct--people of
all persuasions. It is the kind of thing we ought to get into the
workplace. If the Senator will yield, you and I are, at the moment,
functioning on the time that the good Senator from Ohio has come to
use. So if we might, I would like to yield up to 7 minutes to the
Senator from Ohio, and then we might ask unanimous consent to get
another minute or two.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I will be pleased to yield. I ask unanimous consent
that the USA Today editorial entitled ``Harried Workers Need Comp
Time's Flexibility'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Harried Workers Need Comptime's Flexibility
Our View: But unions are blocking flexible work rules favored
by employees and employers alike
What works better for you? Pay for overtime or compensatory
time off instead?
Three quarters of workers say they want a choice. And they
should have it.
With workers spending an hour more on the job each week
than they did 15 years ago and 60% of women working, many
workers are stretched to their limits in meeting family
needs. A survey by the independent Families and Work
Institute found 40% of workers saying they don't have enough
time for family chores; another third lack time for personal
needs.
The problem has some businesses scrambling for answers.
Seven in 10 offer workers flexible starting and ending hours.
Many have added a personal day off. Some are experimenting
with ``free days'' that combine vacation, holiday and sick
leave.
And many say they would like to offer time off for
overtime. But they can't, at least not to the 60 million
full-time hourly employees who make up the bulk of the
private workforce.
Federal law bars the practice.
[[Page S5410]]
The Fair Labor Standards Act mandates private hourly
workers be paid 1.5 times their hourly wage for each hour
over 40 worked in any seven-day period. No time off instead,
even if the employee wants it.
It's a ridiculous situation, made more ludicrous by
fumbling over the issue in Congress. Both parties claim they
want comptime, but labor union resistance is causing the
Democrats to stall.
Last week, the Senate couldn't agree even to allow a vote
on a comptime measure. The bill, similar to one already
passed by the House, would allow, but not require, employers
to offer employees 1.5 hours of paid time off for every hour
worked over 40 hours instead of paying overtime. Employees
could bank up to 240 comptime hours a year. They could use
them when they wanted as long as they provided reasonable
notice and doing so wouldn't cause undue disruption to the
business. Unused hours would be cashed at the end of the
year. Employees also could negotiate agreements with
employers for 80-hour, two-week schedules--45 hours one week,
35 the next, for example--without overtime.
Any finding that employers coerced employees would lead to
double pay, heavy fines and potential jail time.
Democrats say that's not good enough. They argue employers
will still coerce workers. But the real source of their
opposition lies elsewhere. Labor unions don't want comptime
except through negotiations with unions. And unions
contributed $30 million to Democratic campaigns last year.
Without labor opposition, most differences over comptime
could be solved.
A choice between time off and overtime is an option that
can benefit employees and employers alike. Those who stand in
the way deserve a permanent vacation.
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his
eloquent statement and comments about the need for S. 4. I also thank
my friend and colleague from Missouri for the great work he has been
doing to bring not only to the attention of the Senate but to the
American people exactly what is at stake in regard to this bill.
Mr. President, I am proud, again, to be on the floor to speak in
favor of the Family Friendly Workplace Act. This bill is a truly
necessary and forward-looking response to the major changes that have
already taken place in the U.S. work force in the last few years.
Mr. President, today's working men and working women feel battered
between the conflicting demands of work and family. They feel there has
to be a better way. I think they are right.
Mr. President, the bill we are here to talk about on the floor today
represents that better way--a better way for workers to balance the
needs of family and the needs of the workplace. This bill gives working
people the flexibility that they know would make a huge difference for
the better in their lives.
Mr. President, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Department
of Labor Women's Bureau, the top concern of working women is flexible
scheduling in the workplace--flexible scheduling, which will allow them
to balance their responsibilities at work with the needs of their
children and the needs of their spouses. A stunning 66 percent of
working women with children reported that their primary concern was the
difficulty that they were having in balancing work and family.
According to another recent poll conducted, 88 percent of all workers
want more flexibility, either through scheduling flexibility or choice
of compensatory time in lieu of traditional overtime pay. In that same
poll, Mr. President, 75 percent--three-fourths--favored a change in the
law that would permit hourly workers such a choice.
These poll results tally with what most of us know intuitively, what
we know from talking to our own constituents. As both the economy and
American family life grow more and more complex, the men and women in
America's work force want greater flexibility to be able to cope with
all of these changes.
The legislation known as S. 4 would do that. It does not propose
doing something untried, something unheard of, something never used
before. On the contrary, this is not revolutionary. We have a history
of its use in the public sector, and we have a history of its use among
employers who are not hourly but are salaried employees. All this bill
does is give workers and their employers in the private sector the same
kind of workplace flexibility that their counterparts have had for
years in the public sector.
Mr. President, I don't think it is outrageous to say that workers in
the private sector should have the benefit of the same kind of
flexibility Government workers have today. In fact, all it is is a fair
shake. It is only equity and equality; it is only fairness.
Mr. President, American society has changed a great deal over the
last few decades. The stereotypical role of management and labor, male
and female workers, simply does not exist anymore today. In 1938, when
the original underlying legislation was passed, less than 16 percent of
married women worked outside of the home. Today, more than 60 percent
of married women work outside of the home. And 75 percent of mothers
with school age children work outside the home today.
The world has gone around many times in those years and the world has
changed. The American society has changed. The squeeze on these
workers, between family and job, is so great that workers themselves
believe that action is absolutely imperative. That is why we are trying
to change the outdated Fair Labor Standards Act. Mr. President, this
would be a real, positive and necessary change for real American
working families.
A few weeks ago, I was on the floor and I talked about the Morris
family, an Ohio family. Clayton Morris, a father and a husband, is a
public employee. That means he has the option of choosing compensatory
time over traditional monetary overtime pay. He is free to spend
important extra time, because of this, with his 2\1/2\-year-old son,
Domenic.
However, Clayton's wife Ann is a sales assistant for a Cleveland area
business form company. That means she can't take time off to be with
Domenic in lieu of overtime pay. The Federal Government today prohibits
her from doing that. Ann has said, ``He''--referring to husband
Clayton--``has the ability, if he works overtime, to store those hours.
He can use the stored comptime to be at home where he is needed.
However, when I need to be able to leave work, I end up having to take
sick time or vacation time to do the very same thing. It would be
really nice if I had a flexible schedule.''
Mr. President, American workers and their employers want and are
demanding this flexibility. Seemingly, countless studies and surveys
have pointed out, time and time again, Americans' overwhelming need,
desire, and support of a more flexible workplace schedule and the
changes the Family Friendly Workplace Act would provide.
Mr. President, if you look at a family like the Morrises, you can see
one major reason for the broad public support for this bill. People in
the private sector see their friends and family members who are in the
public sector; they see how much this type of flexibility helps them
and helps their families. They see it and know it works.
Mr. President, I regret that thus far in the U.S. Senate, some
Members of the Senate have chosen to stand in the way of the perfectly
legitimate desire on the part of American workers and employers for a
truly flexible, family-friendly workplace.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time
under our control be extended by 10 minutes. We checked with the other
side, and I believe they are in concurrence. This is so that the
Senator might finish his remarks and appropriately not have to rush.
Then we may be rejoined by the Senator from Missouri.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
Mr. DeWINE. In conclusion, Mr. President, let me stress that it is
not too late for this Senate to work toward an intelligent bipartisan
resolution of this issue.
I say to my friends: Let's put politics aside. Let's try to see how
far we can move toward giving America's workers what they want, what
they need, and what they deserve. This is one case where thus far the
American people are far ahead of this Congress--far ahead of this
Congress in the very real sense that they know this law needs to be
changed. They know that we need to have this flexibility. They not only
want it. They are demanding it.
I am confident that in the days ahead and weeks ahead we will be able
to bring about this change that the American workers--people who work
by the hour, who are out there every day trying to make a difference,
every day who are trying to balance their family
[[Page S5411]]
obligations with their obligations in the workplace--need. They need
this type flexibility that S. 4 will give them.
I again commend my colleague from Georgia for the great work that he
has done on this bill, and my colleague from Missouri for bringing this
matter to the floor.
I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Ohio. I hope
that the family that he alluded to in the term of his career will find
the relief we are so avidly pursuing here.
I have been reading--the Senator wasn't present through all of it--
from the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, the great article that
talks about the rigors and stress in the workplace. And it says,
``Effects of Economic Changes on Families and Children.'' It is a short
article. I hope everybody gets a chance to read it.
It says that because mothers assume more of the caretaking
responsibilities for children, the elderly, and frail, the problems of
integrating work and family responsibilities can disproportionately
impact women, both professionally and personally, the very point that
S. 4 is trying to correct, or at least help correct.
It says a major consequence of changes in the economy is that
dependents do not spend as much time with the family members who are
responsible for their welfare.
I mentioned earlier. You can see it in all the data about family and
children: school scores, the violence, the drugs, and a host of related
problems.
Relationships among all family members suffer, and in some
cases affect both family stability and workplace performance.
The total time parents spend with their children has
diminished by about one-third in the last 30 years.
In the face of that, the rules that govern the workplace have stayed
virtually static. Here we have a situation where children receive a
third less attention. Of course, SAT scores have plummeted, teenage
violence has soared, and the Congress has not stepped forward to
modernize that workplace.
I thank the Senator from Ohio. We have just been joined by the
primary author and sponsor of the Family Friendly Workplace Act. He has
done a remarkable job in explaining the necessity of this to America.
I am going to yield the remainder of my time, which is about 5
minutes, to the bill's primary sponsor, Senator Ashcroft of Missouri.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you, Mr. President.
Let me take this moment to express my appreciation and give my thanks
to the Senator from Georgia, the Senator from Ohio, the Senator from
New Mexico, the Senator from Wyoming, and others who have spoken
eloquently in behalf of American workers.
It is easy to say, Well, we are talking about a bill here, a bill
before the U.S. Senate. But the truth of the matter is that we are
talking about people. We are taking about people and families. We are
talking about the fact that people in single-parent homes--obviously
100 percent of the parents--have to be at work. And in multiple-parent
homes, two-parent families, the cost of doing business and taxes have
really literally driven the second parent into the workplace, and they
need to have time. People feel the financial stress, and they feel the
family stress.
All that we really have offered by the administration is that we
would give people family and medical leave, which is a way to say that
you can have time off without pay if you need to spend time with your
family. If you give people time off without pay, that increases the
financial stress that they went to work to resolve.
I have found in my own family that every time I had to take a kid to
the doctor that was not when I needed less pay. That was when I needed
my full paycheck, because when you had those emergencies there is all
of the little dollar costs of those emergencies.
So I really believe that this opportunity we present to let people
sort of develop a bank of time off so that they can take time off with
pay later on is very important.
The comptime part of this bill--which is to say that, if you are
asked to work overtime, you can say instead of having time-and-a-half-
time overtime pay I would like to have an hour and a half with pay off
later on for each hour that I work in overtime. Time off with pay
instead of just taking pay as time for the overtime is a way for people
to meet these needs.
It only though goes to people who normally get overtime. What you
really find out is that of about close to 60 million workers who work
by the hour in America only about a third of them ever get any overtime
at all. Most companies say, ``Well, we just can't afford to be paying
150 percent of our labor costs. So we don't provide for any overtime.''
So, if all we did was to address the comptime parts of the labor
force, which is the way you can get time and a half off for working an
hour of overtime, time and a half off with pay, we would find ourselves
limited from a quarter to a third of the work force that we were
helping.
The last time I checked, whether or not your company does overtime,
or whether or not you normally get overtime, your kid still gets sick,
your kids still get awards, your kids still go to soccer games, and
they still need their parents. But, if we just deal with the narrow
quadrant of the culture that gets overtime, we are going to ignore two-
thirds to three-quarters of the culture, and we really need to do more
than that.
It is important for us to then have what we provided for every
Federal employee, and that is the option for flextime. Flextime is the
way to schedule work in advance, to work an extra hour in one period so
you can take an hour off with pay in another period, or the most
popular program for Federal workers. This started in the 1970's.
So there is not a big problem to work 45 hours 1 week in return for
only having worked 35 hours in the next week, and that really results
in people taking every other Friday off. Since Friday is a working day,
you can do the motor vehicle license stuff, or you can go to the
doctors. It is the ability for people to spend time with their
families.
One other point needs to be mentioned, especially in light of the
remarks of the Senator from New Mexico about serving working women.
Overtime work in this country is concentrated among men. Hourly workers
are just about split evenly between women and men. But overtime work is
2-to-1 in favor of men. So for every woman that gets an overtime hour
men get two overtime hours.
So, if we are really going to try to relieve pressure on working
women, we do less for women in this bill if we just do the comptime,
and if we do not get to the flextime part of the bill.
I think it couldn't be said more clearly than in USA Today, the lead
editorial, ``Harried workers need comptime flexibility but unions
blocking flexible work rules are favored by employees and employers
alike.''
That is the black letterhead line sort of stuff.
I already submitted this for the Record. It says those who stand in
the way deserve a permanent vacation. I don't know that we want to put
them on vacation but send them home.
The point is we really need to find ways to help workers. This is the
way to help people have more time with their families without taking a
pay cut and to help people plan. The more pressing the responsibilities
are the more valuable planning is.
It is against the law right now to plan with your employer to work an
extra hour this week and take that hour off with pay next week. We
shouldn't make it against the law for people to do reasonable things
like that. It is against the law right now for your employer to say,
``Instead of paying you time and a half time off, I am giving you time
and a half off with pay down the road.'' It is against the law.
The Government shouldn't be about the business of making reasonable
agreements like that against the law.
The editors of USA Today have made it clear that they agree that this
is something that needs to happen, and that labor unions and their
lobbyists here in Washington shouldn't stand between the American
people in this capacity to serve their families.
It is with that in mind that we should continue to work toward the
enactment of the Family Friendly Workplace Act.
I yield the floor.
[[Page S5412]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time granted to the Senator from Georgia
has now expired.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________