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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: September 12, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: September 12, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Overtime and the Fair Labor Standards Act

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Introduction:

• Labor is a major issue in the current presidential election. We need to read and think about what each candidate offers the worker, and how the election of each candidate will affect the social construction of work for the next four years. I wanted to share this reading with you as part of our background study of the social construction of the campaign.

Focus:

• I would like you to come away from this reading with an idea of what overtime issues are and how both Kerry and Bush would deal with them, according to their issues statements. If you are interested in the campaigns of the Green Party and the Independent Party, you should examine their literature for how they would handle the issue.

Concepts and Key Words:

• Fair Labor Standards Act: What does the Fair Labor Standards Act require? Overtime requirements are defined here.

• exemptions: Exemptions to FLSA.

Reading:

• Please scan the definitional files listed under key terms and concept so you will understand them in the discussion.

• AFL-CIO reports overtime pay under attack. This may include police officers. Be aware.

  "As early as March 2004, President George W. Bush could take away working people's hard-fought 40-hour workweek and overtime pay—with no meaningful increased flexibility to help workers balance demands of jobs and family.

  "Under the Bush proposal to change the Fair Labor Standards Act, some 8 million workers, including police officers, nurses, store supervisors and many other workers, would face unpredictable work schedules and reduced pay because of an increased demand for extra hours for which employers would not have to compensate workers, according to an Economic Policy Institute report.

  "The Bush proposal also could take away overtime pay protections for America's military veterans. " From AFL_CIO site. Consulted on September 12, 2004.

• Eliminating the right to overtime pay Department of Labor proposal means lower pay, longer hours for millions of workers. June 26, 2003 | Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper. by Ross Eisenbrey and Jared Bernstein. For a summary of EPI's recent work on overtime issues, click here.

• Democratic National Party Position on Overtime.

  "Tell Senate Leaders to Reject Bush's Attack on Overtime.

  "On August 23rd, the Bush administration's overtime rules went into effect, endangering overtime eligibility for up to six million workers. On Thursday, Democrats in the House passed a bill that blocked those rules, but a similar version must pass the Senate in order to restore workers' overtime benefits. Sign our petition below to urge Senate leaders to pass the same bill and save worker overtime."

• Republican National Party Position on Overtime not directly stated that I could find, but:

  "More to Do: Many Americans are working hard to make ends meet. We must continue to push forward on a pro-growth economic agenda that meets the needs of the American people. . . . "Reducing regulation - ensuring that Federal regulations do not unduly handicap America's entrepreneurs by streamlining regulations and reducing paperwork."

  I think taking the teeth out of the Fair Labor Standards Act might be one of those things called reducing regulation, and I don't think it's going to help workers. The Economic Policy Institute Report and the Democratic Party agree with me. You figure it out. jeanne

Discussion Questions:

1. How?

   Things to be considered in answer.

2. Why?

   Things to be considered in answer.

3. Do you think?

   Some clue to what you were thinking about.

Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:

• Agencies:
  Sample linking: Ways in which underlying assumptions of assimilation affect services offered and clients' ability to access and use those services. How does this reading illustrate the need for social agencies, for more generalized agencies, for what Bolman and Deal would call "leadership" AND "management"? How does this reading suggest ways in which we could be more effective in rendering help, and what is the reading's relationship to a "safety net" for those who need help?

• Criminal Justice:
  Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?

• Law:
  Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?

• Moot Court:
  Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?

• Women in Poverty:
  Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?

• Race, Gender, Class:
  Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?

• Religion:
  Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?

• Love !A:
  Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?

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