(The AFL-CIO issued the following press release on October 2.)
Today the House courageously rejected the Bush assault on overtime. The Senate rejected the Bush assault on overtime and nearly three-quarters of the American people overwhelmingly rejected the Bush assault on overtime in a recent poll. We call on President Bush to withdraw his assault on overtime and withdraw his threat to veto any legislation that protects overtime.
Working families are grateful to all those House members, including Republicans who broke rank with their leadership, for safeguarding the rights and interests of workers and their families.
The right to overtime pay is a fundamental element of the national promise that workers should get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’. For more than sixty years, the overtime right has been the rule for most workers, and denial of that right has been a narrow exception to the rule. The Labor Department’s proposed revisions to the overtime regulations, however, would drastically broaden existing exemptions from coverage, making it even easier for employers to demand more work for less pay from their employees. These changes will hurt millions of workers and their families.
At a time when the economy is bleeding jobs, when wages are falling and family incomes have declined by more than $1500 in just three years, when poverty is up and health care coverage is down, President Bush and his Labor Department have no business doing the bidding of American business by stripping away overtime pay protections from American workers. In fact, a poll conducted by Hart Research indicates that 74 percent of Americans oppose the administration’s plan.
Both houses of Congress have now spoken – and they have directed President Bush not to take away overtime pay from working families. America’s workers and their families hope the president is listening.