[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 9, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11192-S11197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND
RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 2660, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 2660) making appropriations for the
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.
Pending:
Specter amendment No. 1542, in the nature of a substitute.
Byrd amendment No. 1543 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide
additional funding for education for the disadvantaged.
Akaka amendment No. 1544 (to amendment No. 1542), to
provide funding for the Excellence in Economic Education Act
of 2001.
Mikulski amendment No. 1552 (to amendment No. 1542), to
increase funding for programs under the Nurse Reinvestment
Act and other nursing workforce development programs.
Kohl amendment No. 1558 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide
additional funding for the ombudsman program for the
protection of vulnerable older Americans.
Kennedy amendment No. 1566 (to amendment No. 1542), to
increase student financial
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aid by an amount that matches the increase in low- and
middle-income family college costs.
Dodd amendment No. 1572 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide
additional funding for grants to States under part B of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
DeWine amendment No. 1561 (to amendment No. 1542), to
provide funds to support graduate medical education programs
in children's hospitals.
DeWine amendment No. 1560 (to amendment No. 1542), to
provide funds to support poison control centers.
DeWine amendment No. 1578 (to amendment No. 1542), to
provide funding for the Underground Railroad Education and
Cultural Program.
Harkin amendment No. 1580 (to amendment No. 1542), to
protect the rights of employees to receive overtime
compensation.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, last week the Labor Department announced we
had lost almost 100,000 more jobs in the month of August. Almost 9
million American people are unemployed. Almost 2 million of these
people have been out of work for more than 6 months. As bad as these
numbers are, the real story is even worse. These figures don't include
1.7 million people who want work but have given up looking for it and
are no longer counted in the unemployed listed by the Labor Department.
They don't qualify.
The problem is especially frightening among minority groups.
Unemployment among African Americans is double the rate for whites. It
is much harder for Hispanic and Asian Americans to find jobs.
Some may have heard the economy in Nevada is booming. We are so
fortunate. It isn't as bad as it is in some places. But ``booming'' is
not the proper term for it. People in Nevada, as good as it is, are
having a lot of problems. We have more than 90,000 people out of work.
These numbers are grim, and they don't even begin to tell the story.
Every time we lose a job, it threatens another family's American
dream--the dream of owning a home, building a strong community, giving
children a good education.
Some have said the economy is recovering. But is it recovering when
we are still losing jobs to the tune of 100,000 a month? We know job
loss is not a normal function of the business cycle. Job loss reflects
more serious underlying problems with our economy such as the alarming
loss of manufacturing jobs. In the last 3 years, we lost 16 percent of
our manufacturing jobs. This is serious, and we need to take it
seriously. We need a plan to create more jobs.
Unfortunately, the administration's only plan seems to be more of the
same. Since January of 2001, we have lost more than 3 million jobs.
This is the first administration since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs, and
our President says more of the same.
We have to do something different. Instead of a continual program of
tax breaks for those who have the most, we have to create jobs for
those who want to work. We can create jobs by building new schools,
roads, bridges, by rebuilding our decaying sewer systems, and by
replacing broken water pipes. Any State in the Union qualifies for new
schools, new roads, new bridges, and, of course, rebuilding our
decaying sewer systems and replacing broken water pipes.
All over America there are plans no longer on the drawing boards.
They are ready to be executed. They just need the money. We can create
jobs. For every billion dollars we spend on a public works project, we
create 47,000 high-paying jobs. We can also create jobs by promoting
new technology to produce energy, and we can do this by having a view
that we should do more with renewable, nonpolluting sources. This will
not only create jobs, it will benefit our environment and help us
achieve energy independence.
We can save existing jobs by helping our financially burdened States
so they do not have to raise taxes on working families and small
businesses. We can reverse this trend. We can save the jobs we have and
help create new ones. We have to be innovative.
I hope the President will consider joining with this Senator and
others who want to push what we call the American Marshall Plan; that
is, have the Federal Government spend money to create jobs. These jobs
are not Government jobs; they are private sector jobs.
I repeat, for every $1 billion we spend, there are 47,000 high-paying
jobs, and the spinoff from those jobs is unbelievably large. That is
what we need to do. America needs it. We need it to create jobs, but we
also need it to make America a better place to live with better roads,
bridges, dams, cleaner water, and able to adequately dispose of our
sewer problems.
Mr. President, I hope we can do some of these activities in the
immediate future, and I hope we are joined by the administration.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 1580
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, last week I offered an amendment to the
pending appropriations bill that would prevent the administration from
implementing a new regulation that could result in millions of American
workers losing their overtime pay protection.
My amendment is very straightforward. It would allow the
administration to increase overtime pay protection for working
Americans but not take it away from those who currently have that
protection.
I was quite surprised, as a matter of fact, to come to work yesterday
and find that on Friday, after we had debated this appropriations
bill--we adopted a couple of amendments on the appropriations bill last
Friday, and, we all know, at the end of the day, the leader always has
unanimous consent requests agreed to that have been worked out on both
sides. I was quite surprised to see that last Friday, the Senate passed
unanimously, by consent, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution supporting a
balance between work and personal life being in the best interest of
national worker productivity and families.
S. Res. 210 was adopted last Friday. It is sponsored by Mr. Hatch,
Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Alexander, and I assume others. It expresses
the sense of the Senate that supporting a balance between work and
personal life is in the best interest of national worker productivity
and that the President should issue a proclamation designating October
as ``National Work and Family Month.''
I will read a few of the clauses that we all voted for last Friday:
Whereas the quality of workers' jobs and the supportiveness
of their workplaces are key predictors of job
productivity, job satisfaction, commitment to employers
and retention. . . .
Whereas employees who feel overworked tend to feel less
successful in their relationships with their spouses,
children, and friends, and tend to neglect themselves, feel
less healthy, and feel more stress;
Whereas 85 percent of U.S. wage and salaried workers have
immediate, day-to-day family responsibilities off the job;
Whereas 46 percent of wage and salaried workers are parents
with children under the age of 18 who live with them at least
half-time;
Whereas job flexibility allows parents to be more involved
in their children's lives, and parental involvement is
associated with children's higher achievement in language and
mathematics, improved behavior, greater academic persistence,
and lower dropout rates. . . .
Whereas nearly all working adults are concerned about
spending more time with their immediate family. . . .
Resolved, That--
(1) it is the sense of the Senate that--
(A) reducing the conflict between work and family life
should be a national priority; and
(B) the month of October should be designated as ``National
Work and Family Month'';
(2) the Senate requests that the President issue a
proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to
observe ``National Work and Family Month'' with appropriate
ceremonies and activities.
We adopted this resolution last Friday, unanimously. Maybe some did
not know about it. I did not know about it either, but I support it. It
sounds very
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good: It is the sense of the Senate that reducing the conflict between
work and family life should be a national priority.
We have this resolution, and now we have the proposal by the
administration, rolled out this spring under cover of darkness--there
was not one public hearing anywhere in the Nation--which changes rules
and regulations that will affect overtime protection for over 8 million
American workers and their families.
It is interesting that the administration did not ask us to change
the law. No, they just want to do it by rules and regulations.
We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have a sense-of-the-Senate
resolution saying--we all say--we have to reduce the conflict between
work and family life, and it ought to be a national priority; that
people need to spend more time with their families, and then let the
administration implement these changes in rules and regulations which
mean that people will have to work longer hours with less pay. That is
exactly what it means: longer hours with less pay.
I found it so interesting that we have been debating my amendment--it
came up last week. I guess we talked about it a couple of times during
the week. We talked about it at length on Thursday. We spoke about it
on Friday, and yet on the very same day we adopt a sense-of-the-Senate
resolution unanimously saying we want to reduce stress on families. We
want to recognize that workers need more time with their families.
Well, OK, here is a chance to not just have a sense-of-the-Senate
resolution but to take concrete action to make sure that happens by
telling the administration that we are not going to permit these
changes in rules and regulations that would take away overtime
protection for up to 8 million people.
Again, a quick summary of the Bush administration's proposal is
simply this: Eliminate the 40-hour workweek by allowing employers to
deny millions of workers overtime pay, workers who are currently
guaranteed overtime pay protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act
passed in 1938. This proposal is antiworker. It is antifamily. It is
the antithesis, the total opposite, of what we passed on Friday as a
sense-of-the-Senate resolution. It is an attack on America's middle and
lower income workers. It will not create one job. In fact, just the
opposite; it will kill a lot of jobs.
Why do I say that? Because employers right now know that if workers
work more than 40 hours a week, they have to pay time and a half
overtime. So in many cases, they might find it better to go ahead and
hire someone new, hire another person, rather than paying that kind of
overtime pay.
Let's say one changes the rules of the game. No longer is one
protected by time and a half. That means their employer can say they
need them to work 43 hours this week, 44 hours, 45, but guess what.
They do not get any more money. They get the same salary they had
before. They just do not get any more money.
Now, what is an employer going to do? Why, here is a new pool of
labor that is not going to cost him a cent. So why would they go hire
someone new to work when they can take an existing person and say work
longer at no extra pay?
Employers will have a financial disincentive to hire new workers if
they can force current workers to work these longer hours without pay.
Who are we talking about? We are talking about nurses--again, we have
a nursing shortage right now and we are trying to get more nurses--
police officers, firefighters, retail managers, insurance claim
adjustors, journalists, medical technicians, paralegals, surveyors,
secretaries, and so on. For most of those men and women, the overtime
pay they earn is not spare change. It is not for frivolous spending.
Sometimes it is essential to help pay the mortgage, feed the children,
pay for college, and save for retirement.
In fact, I have a recent letter from the National Association of
Police Organizations which represents thousands of law enforcement
officers from across the country. They oppose the administration's
proposal because, as they said:
Under such regulations, America's State and local law
enforcement officers, already strained by countless overtime
hours ensuring community safety from terrorist threats, could
lose their basic benefit accorded to them for their efforts.
A few days ago President Bush was asked a question about my
amendment. He said that basically I was wrong. He said that the
proposal would increase overtime coverage for low-income workers.
Interestingly enough, part of the proposal does raise the income
threshold, and I will get into that in a minute. So he says it is going
to cover more people. The other part of the proposal, though, in
changing the rules, would result in up to 8 million people losing
overtime pay protection.
By raising this income threshold, most of the people who are already
getting overtime pay are already over that threshold so they are going
to be covered anyway. They are covered now. They are going to be
covered then. So it is really not going to increase the number of
people paid overtime pay because they are already getting it. But do
not take my word for it. This is what industry and their consultants
had to say about it from Hewitt Associates. On their Web they say their
clients include half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. This is
what Hewitt Associates said:
These proposed changes likely will open the door for
employers to reclassify a large number of previously
nonexempt employees as exempt--
Meaning exempt from overtime pay.
The resulting effect on compensation and morale could be
detrimental, as employees previously accustomed to earning,
in some cases, significant amounts of overtime would suddenly
lose that opportunity.
The administration argues the proposal they are putting out is simply
to update and clarify current regulations under the Fair Labor
Standards Act. Again, the Society for Human Resource Management, which
touts itself on its Web site as the world's largest association devoted
to human resource management, said the following:
This is going to affect every workplace, every employee and
every professional.
I will explain a little bit about how some of these rules work right
now. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, hourly workers are
generally guaranteed overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a
week. Many salaried workers are also eligible for overtime pay under
this law. The administration's proposal will make it much easier for
employers to deny salaried workers overtime pay protection. The result:
Millions of salaried workers earning more than $22,100 a year would be
denied overtime under the proposed changes. This proposal would keep
workers from spending time with their families without compensation.
Now, we said last week we want workers to spend more time with their
families. One of the ways to do that is if they have guaranteed
overtime.
Maybe the employer says, well, I do not need an employee to work
overtime because I have to pay time and a half. Well, now if I do not
have to pay them time and a half, they can work 44, 48 hours a week and
I do not have to pay anything extra.
I have always thought at least--and I think it has sort of been
generally accepted as a kind of a social contract in this country--that
we wanted people to spend more time with their families, but if an
employer needed someone to work overtime, that they would be
compensated for that at more than just their regular pay because we
were taking away the time they could spend with their family that would
be beyond their normal workweek, and therefore we paid time and a half,
or on Sundays sometimes double time, for that kind of overtime.
Right now, American workers already work longer hours than any
industrialized country and nearly all Third World countries. This is a
chart that shows that. U.S. work hours increase, over the years, while
those in other industrialized nations decrease. Here is the change in
annual average hours worked from 1979 to 2000. We see in the United
States it went up 32 hours. In Japan, it has fallen 386 hours; Germany,
fallen 489 hours; France, fallen 244 hours; Italy, 88; United Kingdom,
107 hours; Canada, minus 31 hours; Australia, minus 44 hours. This is
from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001.
Already, our workers are working more than their counterparts in all
of
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these countries, from Japan to Australia to the United Kingdom, France,
and Germany. They have made a decision in those countries that one can
still have high productivity and still give workers time off to be with
their families, and they have a better social system and stronger
families because of it, and because workers are not working so much
they are more productive in the time they do work. In America we just
keep on working people more and more, longer hours all the time. So
already American workers are working longer hours.
Under this proposal put out by the Bush administration to take away
overtime protection, in a few years this number is going to be
skyrocketing. As I said before, it is not enough that we export all of
our manufacturing jobs out of this country to Third World countries;
now we are importing Third World labor standards into this country: No
labor protections and no overtime protection, just work however long
your employer wants you to work without overtime pay protection.
Major women's organizations, including the National Partnership for
Women and Families and the American Association of University Women,
oppose the administration's proposal because they fear an increase in
mandatory overtime would take time away from families and disrupt the
schedules of working parents as well as impose additional childcare and
other expenses.
I said last week that the first wave of people who will be hit, if
this proposed change goes through, will be women. This charts show what
I mean and why it will be women who will be hit first and hardest. I am
not saying men won't be hit; they will be. But I am saying the first
wave of people hit the hardest by taking away overtime pay protection
will be women.
If we look at the labor force participation rate for men and women
from 1948 until today, we see participation of women has climbed
dramatically. Women's participation in the labor force climbed from
slightly over 30 percent to over 60 percent, and participation rates
for men consequently have declined from about 88 percent to about 74 or
75 percent. So it is women who have come into the workforce in the last
30 or 40 years.
We see some other statistics here. We find that 61.3 percent of
married couples with children were dual earners in 2002.
In 1975, 47.3 percent of women with children were in the labor force.
In 2002, it was 71.8 percent.
Women with children under 3--in 1975, only 34 percent of women with
children under age 3 were in the workforce. Now it is over 60 percent
of women with children under 3 who are in the workforce. And 66 percent
of women with children worked 40 hours or more in 2002.
Who are these women? Bookkeepers, paralegals, clerks, nurses,
physical therapists, social workers, et cetera, those who are really
doing the nitty-gritty hard work to keep our society together. These
are the facts right here. Now we are going to tell these women: Sorry,
we know you have children in daycare, we know you have to pay a lot for
childcare, but we need you to work longer hours per week.
Maybe in the past, if these women had worked longer hours, they got
time and a half for overtime, but now they will not; they will get the
same salary rate. Now they will have to continue to pay for more
childcare. Yet they will not get 1 cent more for their labors.
This chart also shows what is happening with middle-income families.
Remember last week we passed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution saying it
is the sense of the Senate that reducing the conflict between work and
family life should be a national priority? We recognized:
Whereas nearly all working adults are concerned
about spending more time with their immediate family;
Whereas 85 percent of U.S. wage and salaried workers have
immediate day-to-day family responsibilities off the job;
Whereas employees who feel overworked tend to feel less
successful in their relationships with their spouses,
children, and friends. . . .
That is what we said last week on the Senate floor.
Here is what is happening with our middle-income families. Average
weeks worked per year by middle-income families with children: In 1969,
the number of average weeks worked per year by middle-income families
with children was 78.2. Look at it now, 97.9 weeks per year, average,
for a middle-income family in America with children. That is why I
showed this first chart, where you see the United States is going up in
hours worked and all the other countries are going down. And you wonder
why American workers and their families are stressed out, why we are
having family strife in this country, why families are breaking up, why
the divorce rate gets higher, why our kids don't have parents around
after school to help nurture them. We wonder why we are having such
trouble in our society. Because we are not letting our working parents
spend more time with their families.
Columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote in the New York Times:
You would think that an administration that has presided
over the loss of millions of jobs might want to strengthen
the protections of workers fortunate enough to still be
employed. But that's not what the Administration is about.
Since the Senate overwhelmingly supported the Hatch resolution last
Friday, which I just quoted from--passed unanimously--I would think it
would be a no-brainer to support my amendment saying the administration
cannot take away overtime pay protection for millions of Americans. But
I don't know what the situation is right now with the leadership. We
wanted to vote on it today. We wanted to vote on it today, but I guess
the leadership on that side, on the majority side--I don't know what
they are deciding right now, whether or not we can vote on it today or
not.
But we are all here.
The Senator from Pennsylvania earlier mentioned something about
Democratic Presidential candidates being gone. That is true. They are
running for President. The Senator from Pennsylvania sought the
Presidency himself once. So did this Senator from Iowa. You know what
it is like when you have to be out there on the campaign trail and
attend to your duties here. But it just so happens everyone seems to be
here today. So why don't we vote today? Why is there an empty Chamber?
Why don't we move ahead and vote--now, later, I don't care when--and we
can wrap up this bill by tonight.
Again, I don't know why we would want to make it easier to deny
American workers overtime pay. Why would we want to make it easier? It
seems to me we would want to make it tougher. If we want people to
spend more time with their families, reduce that kind of stress, you
would think we would want to make it tougher, harder to deny American
workers overtime pay. But the proposed regulations of the Bush
administration would make it easier. I don't know. Why would we want to
do that? How would this help the economy? How does it strengthen
families? How does it help people who need to work overtime for extra
pay?
I read into the Record last Friday a statement by a worker--I forget
what State she was from--who had a disabled child, and she was saying
she needed the overtime pay for her upkeep and to keep her child home
and she relied on her overtime pay.
Here it is. Michael Farrar, from Jacksonville, FL. He and his wife
need overtime pay to support their 21-year-old disabled son Andy who
lives with them. Michael Farrar said:
When I took this job, it was clear that I was expected to
work more than 40 hours per week. And I agreed to it because
I knew I'd need the money. We'd be devastated without the
overtime now--we have no more corners to cut.
When I took this job it was clear that I was expected to
work more than 40 hours a week. And I agreed to it because I
knew I would need the money.
Michael Farrar of Jacksonville, FL.
Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA said:
I began my career as a supply clerk earning $3.10 an hour
in 1976.
I entered an upward mobility program and received training
to become an engineer technician with a career ladder that
gave me a yearly boost of income. It seemed though that even
with a decent raise each year I really relied on overtime
income to help make ends meet. There are many more single
parents today with the same problem. How does one pay for the
car that broke down or the braces for the children's teeth?
When I as a working mother leave my 8-hour day job and go
home, my second shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes
to wash, laundry, and all the other house work
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that must be done which adds another 3 to 4 hours to your
workday. When one has to put in extra hours at work, it takes
away from the time needed to take care of our personal needs.
It seems only fair that one should be compensated for that
extra effort.
These are not my words. These are the words of Sheila Perez of
Bremerton, WA.
It seems only fair that one should be compensated for that
extra effort. Overtime is a sacrifice of one's time, energy
and physical and mental well-being. Compensation should be
commensurate in the form of premium pay as it is a premium of
one's personal time, energy and expertise that is being used.
It has been a crime that many engineers and technicians were
paid less than even their straight time for overtime worked.
It has never made sense to me that the hours I work past my
normal 8 are of a lesser value when those additional hours
are a cost of my personal time.
What do we say to Sheila Perez? What do we say to Michael Farrar? I
think what we say to them is that we understand. We passed a sense-of-
the-Senate resolution last Friday. That is what we did. We passed a
sense-of-the-Senate resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that
workers are over-stressed and overworked. They are concerned about
spending more time with their families. We said it is the sense of the
Senate that reducing the conflict between work and family life should
be a national priority. Yes, Michael Farrar, that is what we said. Yes,
Sheila Perez, we said that on your behalf last Friday. But, Michael
Farrar; but, Sheila Perez, today, on Tuesday, the week after, we are
not going to do one single thing to stop the Bush administration from
changing rules and regulations that will take away your overtime pay
protection.
It is not what we do, Ms. Perez or Mr. Farrar, that is important
around here. It is what we say that is important. We said: We are on
your side. We understand your problems. Gosh, we think it should be a
national priority. But don't count on our votes to make it happen.
Listen to what we say but don't watch what we do around this place.
It is time for us to stand and be counted and to put into form what
we said last week the facts are. These are all nice words on a piece of
paper. This is what we believe without actions to back up our beliefs.
What I am asking is the Senate now back up those nice words that we
said last Friday in this sense-of-the-Senate resolution--back them up
with a strong vote saying that we are going to protect overtime pay
protection. We are not going to permit overtime pay protection to be
taken away. If you do not to strengthen it, or if you want to extend
overtime pay protection for more workers, that is fine. But don't take
it away from the workers who now have it.
That is what this amendment that I have offered is all about. I am
hopeful we can get to a vote on it today. We are here to vote. It is
Tuesday. It is already 11:30. We haven't had one vote today. Why not?
Why don't we vote on this? It is the pending amendment. I don't know
why we can't vote on it. But evidently, for some reason, the Republican
majority doesn't want to vote on my amendment. The majority, for some
reason, doesn't want to bring it up for a vote. Why, I don't know.
After all, Republicans, as well as Democrats, voted unanimously last
Friday saying that it is the sense of the Senate that reducing the
conflict between work and family life should be a national priority.
Why we don't want to vote on this today, for the life of me, I can't
understand.
I end my comments now, but I will be back to talk more about this
overtime issue because it is a national issue. It is one that strikes
at the very heart of the middle-income and middle-class families in
this country. It is an issue that strikes at the very heart of our
productivity as a country. It is an issue that strikes at the very
heart of what kind of society we want to be and to become. It strikes
at the very heart of working women who have children and who want some
time, as Ms. Sheila Perez said, to attend to personal needs and to a
second shift at home with their kids and family. That is what it
strikes.
It is time for us to do our duty, to do our job, to stand up for
working families and to stand up for the men and women of this country
who are now being overworked and underpaid. If this proposed change in
regulations goes through, it will mean more overwork and more underpay.
That is the wrong direction for our country. It is time for the Senate
to say no to these changes in regulations that would take away overtime
pay protection for millions of middle-income Americans.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the Department of Labor overtime
proposal is the latest in a series of assaults on working Americans
that began in the early days of this administration. Right out of the
gate, the President made it his first legislative priority to overturn
a Federal ergonomics standard that was more than 10 years in the
making. I am also concerned about the approach this administration has
taken on the collective bargaining process through its use of the
Railway Labor Act and the Taft-Hartley Act. We have also seen the
reintroduction in Congress of so-called ``family friendly'' workplace
bills that we all know really seek to rob working families of vital
overtime pay.
In March of this year, the Department of Labor proposed a regulation
that builds upon these efforts to tear down worker protections by
denying millions of Americans vital overtime pay. This proposed rule
would change the three tests that must be met to declare a worker
exempt from the wage and hour protections of the Fair Labor Standards
Act, thus opening the door to denial of overtime benefits to more than
8 million workers who currently are entitled to this extra pay for
working more than 40 hours per week.
Under current law, a worker must meet each of three tests to be
declared exempt from overtime protections. First, workers earning less
than a certain level each week cannot be exempted. Second, workers must
be paid a set salary, not an hourly rate, in order to be exempt.
Finally, only workers whose job responsibilities are primarily
classified as administrative, professional, or executive can be exempt
from overtime protections. The proposed rule would reduce the
educational levels required to be classified as a professional or
administrative employee, thus allowing employers to substitute as
little as 2 years of work experience for education when considering
whether an employee should be entitled to overtime protections.
I am deeply concerned that the administration continues to
characterize these changes to overtime protections as ``small'' or
``insignificant.'' During an August 31 interview with National Public
Radio, the Secretary of Labor said of the proposed rule, ``it's not an
overtime regulation. We have many, many overtime regulations. This is
not one of the major ones. This is a small part of the Fair Labor
Standards Act that pertains to white collar workers. So it's got
nothing to do with blue collar workers.''
The wage and hour protections of the FLSA are intended to protect all
workers from being forced to work excessive hours without additional
compensation. The Secretary's attempt to differentiate between white
collar and blue collar workers in such a way as to imply that only blue
collar workers are protected by the FLSA is troubling.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, EPI:
The revised regulations--would dramatically increase the
number of workers whose jobs are classified as professional,
administrative, or executive and therefore ineligible for
overtime pay. The blurring of the lines between managerial
and hourly staff, coupled with a downgrading of the
educational standards required to exempt employees from
overtime pay, will give employers a powerful incentive to
switch millions of workers from hourly to salaried status in
order to reap the benefit of a newly created pool of unpaid
overtime hours.
In essence, this rule would create a larger force of employees who
can be required to work longer hours for less pay. This could also mean
fewer opportunities for paid overtime for the workers who would remain
eligible for it.
The administration has claimed that they are trying simply to update
and clarify the FLSA as it applies to white collar employees. According
to the Secretary:
[[Page S11197]]
``[W]hat we are trying to do is clarify a regulation that
has not been modernized in well over 50 years. And the
ambiguity in the regulation is impeding the Department's
ability to enforce the law so that we cannot protect workers
who need protection. So what we are trying to do is to
guarantee vulnerable, low-wage workers the overtime that they
deserve, and we also want to provide clarity so that business
people know what they're supposed to be doing.
It seems to me that the FLSA is abundantly clear: if a worker who is
covered by the act works more than 40 hours per week, he or she is
entitled to time-and-a-half pay for each extra hour worked.
According to the EPI, the administration's proposed changes go far
beyond simple clarifications. ``It is troubling that such dramatic
losses in overtime protection are being proposed as a means of bringing
clarity to the regulations and reducing litigation. As [our report] has
shown--the proposed rule is rife with ambiguity and new terms--that
will spawn new litigation.''
The Secretary's contention that the FLSA has not been updated in 50
years is just plain false. Congress has amended and revised the FLSA
numerous times since its enactment in 1938, most recently just 3 years
ago. I regret that this administration continues to characterize
Federal labor protections as ``outdated'' and claims that it seeks to
``update'' them for the new century, when, in fact, many of its
proposals would roll back protections for workers around the country.
Who are the 8 million workers who will be affected by this proposed
rule change? According to EPI, 257 ``white collar'' occupational groups
could be impacted. EPI did a detailed analysis of the effect of this
rule on 78 of those occupational groups and found that 2.5 million
salaried employees and 5.5 million hourly workers would lose their
overtime protections under the proposed rule. And that is less than
half of the occupational groups that would be covered by this rule
change.
By broadening the FLSA wage and hour exemptions, the Department of
Labor is seeking to deny overtime benefits to a wide range of workers,
including police officers, firefighters, and other first responders,
nurses and other health care workers, postmasters, preschool teachers,
and social workers, just to name a few.
I am deeply troubled that the administration would propose a rule
that would deny overtime benefits to the people who put their lives on
the line each and every day to protect our communities and those who
work in health care professions, which, of course, as we know, already
are facing severe staffing shortages. I am also disappointed that the
Office of Management and Budget issued a ``Statement of Administration
Policy'' document on this bill that states that the President's
advisers would recommend that he veto this important appropriations
bill if the Harkin amendment is adopted. I think it is irresponsible to
threaten to veto a bill that includes crucial funding for labor,
health, and education programs because the administration, apparently,
is digging in its heels about a proposal that would deny millions of
Americans overtime pay. I regret that this administration is so
determined to undermine labor protections for American workers that it
would actually threaten to deny funding for schools, health care, job
training, and other programs that it regularly claims are a priority.
I urge my colleagues to support working families by supporting the
Harkin amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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