Emphasis added. We may have to ban you for this unorthodox behavior. 
Yep.
I don’t think so.
On paper, it’s a free choice. In the real world, it would be abused.
Let’s say Congress proposed a new law that would give employees an option. They could either continue with their current wages. Or they could accept a 25% reduction in wages but their employer would have to buy them a hot dog for lunch every day.
Opponents of the bill would say “Who the hell would take a 25% cut in pay in exchange for a hot dog? That’s just crazy.” And the supporters of the bill say, “Some people might enjoy a hot dog. But that’s the beauty of this law. It’s voluntary. The employee doesn’t have to take the hot dog option unless he wants it.”
So the law gets passed. Do you really think employees will have a real choice in what option they choose? In any at-will employment state, people are going to see that the guys who ask for their full money are losing their jobs. And anyone who doesn’t agree to the hot dog option doesn’t get hired. The choice will be do you want to work for less money and a hot dog or not work at all?
I certainly agree that this is the biggest possibility of abuse – under the table coercion by employers on employees to push them to agree to it.
If this bit is kept, I can get behind the bill. Otherwise, if it’s one hour off for every overtime hour worked, the system would be really unbalanced.
The law doesn’t allow for accruing more than 160 hours of comp time. Further, the law doesn’t really allow for the employee to get “screwed for those unpaid hours” because scheduling doesn’t allow them to take the comp time. It specifically says the employee has the right, on demand, to convert his comp time hours to a cash payout. It also says if the comp time is held for like a year or something it automatically converts to a cash pay out. So it’s actually not possible for the employee to legally get screwed out of either getting comp time or getting money for their overtime hours under this legislation. Now, the company could break the law. But they could also break the law on overtime, and only pay regular time for hours over 40. I’ve heard of that happening, but that’s no reason not to have a given law (because people might break it.)
FWIW I’ve seen violations like that a lot more often at small business, retail/fast food than anywhere else. One of our tenants is a Subway franchisee who got in serious trouble because he was 1. paying people the old minimum wage after the minimum wage went up to $7.25 or whatever it is now, 2. paying people regular pay for hours over 40 per week. That’s actually the incident where I personally have seen someone have to pay “treble damages.” He had to pay everything he owed the employees, then multiplied by three. (Now, I think there was literally like 2 employees out of 15-20 that ever actually worked overtime, but basically all of them other than the manager were making under minimum wage for awhile.)
It does appear to me rather more reasonable than I expected, especially the 1.5hrs leave for each hour of OT. I’m also relieved that there is a cap and payout requirement for unused leave, so a worker who needs the money doesn’t have to take it in the shorts if they chose leave as the initial option.
That’s not to say it couldn’t be abused by employers in any way, but it does seem to open up options for the worker that ALSO benefit the employer.
Resource efficiency is a major issue with employers, and it would improve efficiency if they had workers come in during important (overtime) times, and take time off during slow times, without having to pay more money. Even if it’s 1.5hrs of time off for each extra hour worked, that may be useful to them.
I too can get comp time instead of OT, using it when I want to isn’t an issue, and I’m very happy with it. We have good employers who don’t screw us over. However, it isn’t true of all employers, by a long shot.
In theory, what is proposed is a win-win. In practice, although many people, like us, will be happy with it, many others will be screwed. Employers’ pressures are already a serious issue over here. I can’t begin to imagine how it could be in the USA, where in many (most?) states you can be fired at any moment for any reason or no reason at all.
That’s going to be the first time I envy an American for his work conditions :eek:
I only get 1:1 for comp time 
Time for a strike and protests, I guess 
Having managed in large a large retail chain this is an awesome deal for retailers. That pesky overtime that ruins your allotted payroll budget and forces you to send people home Saturday because you just realized making them stay late on Tuesday will put them over 40 hours can instead be cut at a later date that’s more convenient for you. Instead of having to fire people for accruing overtime due to punching out late you can just punish them by cutting their hours when it’s convenient for you without any additional labor costs. Sucks to be an employing that was hoping to make extra money for working above and beyond their full time hours.
All those round the clock operations get much easier to deal with. No more 4 days on 3 days off factory shifts we can just do 14 days on 7 days off and have the same labor costs.
Companies think long and hard on how to pay employees only their base rate. This law just makes it simple for them to do it. Any excuse not to pay an employ 1.5 times the base rate is boon to employers and a way to screw employees.
Right now employees get paid 1.5xbase for working overtime, they can bank the extra money they make all by themselves and can request time off and use that extra cash all by themselves to cover lost revenue. It doesn’t make much sense to take away that option and put it in the hands of the employer instead.
Here are the bad things that I can think of about the bill:
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If means that participating employees will essentially be floating a loan to their employers for a period of up to a year, for the amount of their earned overtime.
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Already discussed briefly was the potential for abuse, for subtle or not so subtle pressure to be put on employees to participate.
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It’s unclear how “protected” this money is. We’ve all heard stories of business going under or being sold off and chopped up, and employee pension funds being gutted as a result. That same potential seems to exist for this money, though it would probably be a smaller pool.
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I don’t think anyone has mentioned this yet. In the clamber of voices about not letting employees take the leave when needed, we haven’t considered that companies can probably force the employees to take their leave at the companies convenience. They just send people home when times are slow, giving them forced paid vacations on the companies’ schedules.
This kind of cuts both ways, in that this is an improvement over being laid off without pay. OTOH, it allows companies to perform what amount to regular or seasonal layoffs without the bad press that would come if they used the term “layoff”.
I guess former retail store managers are not trained at reading comprehension. Did you not read the thread? The legislation specifically forbids the employer mandating the employee take comp time instead of overtime. It is not an employer option, it is an employee option. The employer is not allowed to coerce the employee into taking comp time in lieu of overtime. Additionally, the employee has the right, if they request it in writing, to cash out their comp time balance as money instead of hours anytime they wish assuming they had previously elected for comp time and changed their minds.
Could businesses violate the rules? Sure, but they could also violate the rules on overtime and work people over 40 hours and pay them regular hour wages, violate the rules on minimum wage and pay people under minimum wage, or illegally classify employees as exempt when they do not meet the definition and treat them as exempt employees. That all happens, but fairly rarely, and the fact that some employers break the law isn’t a reason to get rid of those laws anymore than it is a reason to not pass this law.
The current reality is retail employees are written up and fired for going over 40 hours. So if you give them the option of taking overtime hours as straight comp time guess what option they are going to take. Feel free to cash out those 1.5xbase hours just don’t expect them to keep you on the payroll.
Employers are generally allowed to prohibit unapproved overtime, but they would not be allowed to use coercive tactics to deny people converting comp time to overtime pay under the new law. If they did, they would be in violation of the law. While I suspect many employers violate labor laws, that isn’t a reason to not write labor laws in the first place. If that was a valid argument we could argue overtime laws and minimum wage laws shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Republicans have been known to argue they shouldn’t. It might be the reason we are sceptically the GOP is presenting this bill in good faith. Them wanting to pass a bill for the benefit of labor is a 180. Maybe they can explain this sudden change of heart?
I am skeptical too. But we have the text of it. Motives aside, what is wrong with it?
For the worker, what’s good about it? Today, I can work 27 hours of overtime, receive pay for it, and ask my boss if I can have next week off. Under this new arrangement, I can work 27 hours of overtime, bank it, and ask my boss if I can have next week off. Either way, if he says yes, I get pay equivalent to the 40 hours I’m out.
Other than allowing employers to defer overtime payments and opening employees to subtle or not-so-subtle pressures to work overtime and receive compensation at the employer’s convenience, what does it do? Little Nemo has suggested that an employee who is owed compensation is less likely to be let go, but I think that’s questionable.
What happens to banked time if the business goes under? Is it considered unsecured debt, or does it just go poof?
That’s assuming the odds of your boss agreeing to next week off are the same. What if you work for a company that offers little or no vacation time, or if you’ve used up all of it? The supposed benefit of the proposal is that it’ll give workers more time off. You can’t negate that benefit by simply assuming you already have the ability to get time off.
Right, and in Kyrie Eleison’s scenario the “next week off” would be either unpaid leave or you’d be taking time off out of a leave balance (vacation/personl/etc.) If you could accrue comp time, you could take 40.5 hours off (1.5 hours for every OT hour) which is basically a whole week of work and get paid for it without touching any other leave balances you might have.
Some people might value 40.5 hours of leave at the regular pay rate, more than 27 * 1.5 their hourly rate. It basically gives those employees a choice. Now, whether or not they could take it all off the next week will vary considerably, many companies are liberal in approving vacation whereas others, especially factories doing shift work, you have to work vacation out long in advance due to tight staffing needs.
You could also use 16 of your OT hours and convert them to 24 comp time hours, in that scenario and then take 11 hours of OT pay. That means (assuming the “next week” scenario) you’d basically work two days while staying home for three days at full pay and receive 11 hours of OT on your paycheck.
FWIW, I actually do not think this would have affected a huge number of employees in terms of actually using the comp time. But I think it would have been a nice option. Most employees who get OT fall into two categories that I’ve seen. One is people who almost always work near 40 hours but rarely go over, basically something weird happens and they bump over 40 for the week. Those people would probably just take the occasional small bit of money versus a very small amount of comp time (comp time will feel less valuable IMO anytime you have less than a full day off worth of it.) The other category of OT are people who basically work jobs where there is so much regular OT that it forms a core part of their household budgeting etc, and while they might like to take comp time, and very occasionally probably would, most time they would not because they have come to rely on OT.
And the motivations are basically part of a strategy the GOP worked out at some retreat a few months back to try and target people that don’t vote for them. It’s politically motivated obviously, but it’s not really motivated in favor of big business (they may like it but probably don’t actually have a huge concern either way) as much as it is motivated by the GOP desire to increase its vote share.
I think most of the GOP’s efforts to try and capture new voters will fail due to the current crop of GOP politicians being simply too far out of touch with political reality and prone to mismanaging the attempt. But at the same time, I read an article once about various Republican candidates that have, in certain districts, won much higher than national average numbers of Hispanic, Black, low income etc votes. What all of them said to a tee is “you can’t get votes without asking for them.” So on some level just trying for the votes, even if it’s mismanaged and mostly ineffective (my prediction) is an improvement over basically ignoring or outright antagonizing large segments of the electorate.
That’s an easy one. For the workers who want it, there’s the opportunity to earn more paid time off than they would otherwise be entitled to. Possibly a lot more – if someone who normally gets off two weeks a year accrues the max of comp time and uses it as paid leave, the two weeks goes up to six weeks when adding the two leaves together.
And if workers don’t want to take that much leave, they have the option to cash it in at any time, though with 30 days notice.