[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17757]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      DEMOCRACY NOT PREVAILING WITH REGARD TO OVERTIME REGULATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, here we are again debating overtime 
in the Labor, Health and Human Services bill.
  I feel like it was just last year when we had this same debate, 
because we did. Last year I supported a Democratic overtime pay 
amendment which proposed to prohibit the Department of Labor from using 
funds to enforce any regulation that would cut overtime pay. When the 
amendment was voted on in the House, the Republican majority blocked 
its passage.
  However, the Senate approved an amendment offered by Senator Harkin 
to block the Bush administration from issuing the overtime changes, 
protecting people's overtime. The House then reversed course, against 
leadership's advice, and bipartisanly voted to instruct the negotiators 
to instruct the Harkin language, therefore preserving workers' 
overtime. Even though both the House and Senate voted to protect 
overtime, a few hand-picked Republicans on the conference committee, 
all doing the bidding of President Bush and the Republican leadership, 
removed those protections from the bill.
  The Economic Policy Institute study calculates that under the revised 
Bush overtime rules, kindergarten and nursery school teachers, 
firefighters, police, nurses and hundreds of thousands of other workers 
would lose an average of $250 a week in overtime pay. Millions more 
lose future eligibility for it.
  Under the Bush rules that cut back on overtime, we will see an 
explosion of executives in the United States workforce, companies 
redesignating regular workers to avoid paying overtime.
  It will not be executives the way we think of executives in the 
traditional white-collar sense. Instead, it is workers who supervise 
only two coworkers, such as a shift manager in the toy department of 
Wal-Mart. That person could be classified as executive and then lose 
overtime eligibility.
  Companies can exempt more than one executive for the same workers, as 
long as they maintain a 2-to-1 ratio of exempt to nonexempt employees. 
Supervising, therefore, does not have to include the right to hire and 
fire, as executives usually have, or even take up the majority of the 
executive's time under the new rules. A worker could spend all day 
serving customers, sweeping the floor, doing the same things coworkers 
do, be called a supervisor, and then be denied eligibility for 
overtime.
  Similarly, the new rules create a broad new exemption called team 
leader that can exclude workers from overtime pay under the 
administrative classification. This is a huge loophole. Team leaders 
could have no supervisory authority at all, but still be prohibited 
from receiving overtime.
  The new rules make it easier to exempt workers in financial services 
and in computer-related occupations, among dozens of other job 
categories.
  Tonight the Labor-HHS bill was pulled off the floor and Members of 
Congress were sent home, that is why there are few here now, because 
Republican leadership lacked the votes to defeat this amendment on 
overtime.
  The Department of Labor's mission statement describes it as the 
primary agency to promote the welfare of job seekers and wage earners. 
That is why the Department of Labor was created decades ago. It was 
established solely to represent the interests of the American 
workforce.
  Now, under Secretary Chao, taking her orders from President Bush and 
especially from Vice President Cheney, and especially from the Chamber 
of Commerce, and especially from the American National Association of 
Manufacturers, the Department of Labor now represents corporations at 
the expense of workers. That is why the assault on overtime pay coming 
from our government's Department of Labor against the workers it should 
be representing.
  My colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), wants to offer 
an amendment that prohibits the Department of Labor from implementing 
these new rules on overtime pay, which would protect American workers, 
if we could win our amendment, and protect American families from the 
rising cost of living. We have the votes to pass it, but Republican 
leadership, at President Bush's request, pulled the bill off the floor, 
and we are not going to vote on it. We have the votes to pass it, as I 
said.
  In a democracy, you know, you vote on things. If you have enough 
votes, they pass; if you do not have enough votes, they fail. It is as 
simple as that.
  But here tonight we saw something that cannot quite be considered 
democracy. We do not vote on something because the leadership on the 
other side of the aisle, taking huge campaign contributions from darn 
near every corporate interest in this country, we do not vote because 
leadership on the other side of the aisle simply does not want to lose. 
Their corporate contributors do not like that. The will of the American 
people has been stifled. A major appropriations bill has been held up. 
Also the Republicans do not lose a vote that their corporate backers 
want, that the majority of this House, the representatives of the 
American people, support. You can call that government, but it sure is 
not democracy.

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