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“PROPOSED FINAL REGULATIONS ON OVERTIME” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S4115-S4116 on April 20, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROPOSED FINAL REGULATIONS ON OVERTIME
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the news reports of this morning are that the Department of Labor will shortly publish the final regulations regarding changing the overtime rules that have been in existence since 1938.
Frankly, given its past track record, the Bush administration is simply not trustworthy on this issue. This administration has gone out of its way, time and again, to undercut working families' rights to time-and-a-half pay for overtime.
Now, it is possible that the administration has had an election-year conversion on overtime, but I hope you will pardon me if I remain a little skeptical. I will remain skeptical until I see the regulations and have a chance to analyze them and read the fine print. I have asked the Department of Labor to provide me with a copy of the regulations this morning. I am eager to see them as soon as possible. As of a few minutes ago, they still have not been posted on the Department of Labor's Web site.
Let's be clear about one thing: The draft regulations that came out a year ago were a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules and a frontal assault on the 40-hour workweek. Millions of American workers were slated to lose their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay as a result of those proposed regulations.
Since passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, overtime rights and the 40-hour workweek have been sacrosanct, respected by Presidents of both parties--until now.
This administration rammed through these new regulations a year ago without a single public hearing. It has dismissed public opinion polls showing Americans' overwhelming opposition to changes in overtime law. The White House brushed aside the will of the Senate and the House, both of which voted in support of my amendment last year to block implementation of these new rules.
There is no question the proposed new rules will hurt job creation. If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will simply push their current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With 9 million Americans currently out of work, why give employers yet another disincentive to hire more workers?
Again, while a limited number of low-income workers technically were given the right to overtime pay--and that base was increased--at the same time, the Department of Labor also gave employers advice on how to avoid paying overtime compensation to the lowest paid workers. So the administration gave on the one hand and took it away with the other.
The Department of Labor is poised to issue its final regulations. But I can assure you, this will not be the final act. We will be back. I look forward to reading them. We will look over the fine print, as I said.
For example, last year when the proposed regulations came out, it took some months before everything came out about how bad these proposed regulations really were. So we are going to go over these proposed regulations and take a look at them.
But I know the administration yesterday and in a press report today said this is a good deal; they are going to expand the eligibility for overtime pay; this is going to include more people. Well, we heard the same kind of ``happy talk'' a year ago when they first put out the proposed regs. However, public exposure showed the real facts of the proposed regulations. Up to 8 million Americans were going to lose their right to overtime pay. Again, it is just one in a series of assaults on working Americans by this administration.
Again, if you look at this chart, the red line is what the White House forecast for job creation for 2002. The blue line is what they forecast in 2003. The purple line is what they forecast for 2004. Here is where we really are down here with the green line. So this is
``happy talk.'' The administration says, oh, they are going to forecast more jobs. It is all going to get better. But the facts are not so. Job creation has stayed stagnant. So when you hear all this ``happy talk'' about how these final new regulations on overtime are going to be so wonderful for everyone working in America, take a look at this chart. It is just more ``happy talk.''
We will look them over. But unless this administration has done almost a complete revision of what they proposed, we are going to still be back on the Senate floor asking that these rules not go into effect, and we will have a vote on that.
Finally, I think an article by Bob Herbert in the New York Times of April 5 says it all: ``We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?'' What Mr. Herbert points out in his article is that an awful lot of American workers have been had, fleeced and taken to the cleaners, as he said. He said:
. . . there has been no net increase in formal payroll employment since the end of the recession. We have lost jobs.
He said: What happened to all the money from the strong economic growth? Well, he said:
The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, ``but instead were used to boost profits . . . or increase C.E.O. compensation.''
Well, it is the first time on record where the bulk of the increase has gone to corporate profits and not to labor.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this article of April 5 be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?
(By Bob Herbert)
It's like running on a treadmill that keeps increasing its speed. You have to go faster and faster just to stay in place. Or, as a factory worker said many years ago, ``You can work `til you drop dead, but you won't get ahead.''
American workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, but they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits of this increased productivity. While the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, has been strong for some time now, ordinary workers have gotten little more than the back of the hand from employers who have pocketed an unprecedented share of the cash from this burst of economic growth.
What is happening is nothing short of historic. The American workers' share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the lowest on record. Employers took the money and ran. This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate interests have on the national conversation.
The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very revealing title of a new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University: ``The Unprecendented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation--Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003.''
Andrew Sum, the center's director and lead authority of the study, said: ``This is the first time we've ever had a case where two years into a recovery, corporate profits got a larger share of the growth of national income than labor did. Normally labor gets about 65 percent and corporate profits about 15 to 18 percent. This time profits got 41 percent and labor [meaning all forms of employee compensation, including wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes paid by employers] got 38 percent.''
The study said: ``In no other recovery from a post-World War II recession did corporate profits ever account for as much as 20 percent of the growth in national income. And at no time did corporate profits ever increase by a greater amount than labor compensation.''
In other words, an awful lot of American workers have been had. Fleeced. Taken to the cleaners.
The recent productivity gains have been widely acknowledged. But workers are not being compensated for this. During the past two years, increases in wages and benefits have been very weak, or nonexistent. And despite the growth of jobs in March that had the Bush crowd dancing in the White House halls last Friday, there has been no net increase in formal payroll employment since the end of the recession. We have lost jobs. There are fewer payroll jobs now than there were when the recession ended in November 2001.
So if employers were not hiring workers, and if they were miserly when it came to increases in wages and benefits for existing employees, what happened to all the money from the strong economic growth
The study is very clear on this point. The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, ``but instead were used to boost profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation.''
This is a radical transformation of the way the bounty of this country has been distributed since World War II. Workers are being treated more and more like patrons in a rigged casino. They can't win.
Corporate profits go up. The stock market goes up. Executive compensation skyrockets. But workers, for the most part, remain on the treadmill.
When you look at corporate profits versus employee compensation in this recovery, and then compare that, as Mr. Sum and his colleagues did, with the eight previous recoveries since World War II, it's like turning a chart upside down.
The study found that the amount of income growth devoured by corporate profits in this recovery is ``historically unprecendented,'' as is the ``low share . . . accruing to the nation's workers in the form of labor compensation.''
I have to laugh when the I hear conservatives complaining about class warfare. They know this terrain better than anyone. They launched the war. They're waging it. And they're winning it.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again, we will look over these proposed regulations. But nothing the administration has done in the last couple, 3 years with regard to job creation, with regard to treating labor fairly in terms of getting its fair share of any economic gains, or the proposed regulations last year that would have literally cut off at the knees American workers' right to overtime pay changes my mind; I remain skeptical that this administration really wants to help work workers get overtime pay.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
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