Overtime Amendment Sails in Senate Despite NH Opposition
WASHINGTON – Despite impassioned opposition from New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the Senate Wednesday rejected a Bush administration plan that Gregg argued would entitle 1.3 million more lower-income Americans to overtime pay.
The defeat came in response to arguments by Democrats and organized labor that the proposed changes would strip millions of white-collar workers of their overtime eligibility.
“It’s unfortunate that these hardworking Americans will be left out,” Gregg said in a statement shortly after the vote Wednesday morning. He said the vote amounted to congressional interference in the regulatory process and was both “heavy handed” and “premature.”
The proposed changes would require employers to pay overtime – at the rate of time-and-a-half – to workers who earn less than $22,100 a year, up from the current $8,060 a year. A Democratic amendment passed Wednesday would not prevent the administration from raising that income level, but it would stop President Bush from eliminating higher-income workers from overtime rules.
Democrats say Bush’s proposal, which would tighten rules for receiving overtime, could revoke the eligibility of as many as 8 million white-collar workers.
In a speech on the Senate floor late Tuesday, Gregg panned that assessment, issued by a Washington economic policy think tank, as arbitrary and “extraordinarily suspect.” He said the number of workers who would lose eligibility was more accurately pegged by an independent analysis obtained by the Department of Labor at 600,000 to 700,000.
The senator argued that the trade-off was worthwhile because the half-million newly eligible workers would be those at the lower end of the pay scale.
But more important, Gregg said, any congressional attempt to halt the regulatory process is “a serious overreaching” since the proposed revisions were still under review, citing an estimated 80,000 public comments the Labor Department has yet to consider. As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, Gregg has emerged as one of the amendment’s leading opponents.
Sen. John E. Sununu, R-NH, also voted against the amendment, which Democrats had tacked onto a major social services spending bill.
“Outdated regulations do not serve today’s modern workplace, industry or employees,” Sununu said in a statement. The initial overtime rules were adopted in 1938 and have not been updated in 30 years.
At least one New Hampshire labor advocate was dismayed by the two Senators’ votes, calling them “absolutely a step in the wrong direction.”
“We are disappointed with both Senators Gregg and Sununu,” said Mark Mackenzie, president of NH AFL-CIO, a coordinating council for all AFL-CIO affiliated unions in the Granite State. “I think they’re clearly out of step with what the American people are saying.”
Although he didn’t know how many New Hampshire workers might have been affected by the changes, Mackenzie said his organization sent 75,000 pieces of opposition mail to senators from across the country. And while he conceded that raising the minimum salary requirement was long overdue, Mackenzie said that if the income levels had been phased in gradually, such drastic changes would not be necessary.
Workers “communicated from across the country that this was a bad idea,” he said. “All of the people they included at the bottom end, they took out of the top end.”
The House rejected a similar amendment in July. President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that blocks the proposed changes, leaving the future of the Senate amendment uncertain.
“I think there is going to be an awful lot of pressure at this point,” Mackenzie said. “We’re gearing up for the next phase of this thing, and my hope is that it will hold.”
