http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/TUE/FIN/overtime.2.html Paris, Tuesday, September 5, 2000 U.S. Workers Start to Balk at Forced Overtime Living in Economic Boom Times Means It's Not Just About Money
By Sarah Schafer Washington Post Service
WASHINGTON - Charlene Bobel has no time. Each workday she wakes up at 6 a.m. to make the one-hour commute from her home to leave her two young daughters at day care. Then she punches in at a Verizon Communications call center to begin answering customer-service questions.
Sometimes Ms. Bobel makes it to pick up Brittney and Gabrielle when their day-care center closes at 5:30 p.m.; sometimes she doesn't. It all depends on whether Verizon requires her to work overtime, and when that happens, Ms. Bobel has no choice but to ask the day-care center to keep her children late.
Ms. Bobel says the mandatory overtime, as much as seven and a half hours each week, leaves her powerless over her schedule and her life. Sure, the pay is good, but her family suffers, she said.
''It's nice to see the little extra money, but I'd rather spend the time with my children,'' Ms. Bobel said.
Even as millions of U.S. workers celebrated economic good times over the Labor Day weekend, many are complaining about forced overtime. Federal law requires companies to pay hourly employees extra if they work more than 40 hours a week. But nothing except union contracts can stop the companies from ordering workers to stay late or come in on weekends and from firing them if they do not.
Managers and employees have fought over the appropriate length of the workweek since the U.S. labor movement began in the 19th century, but recent workplace changes have created new frictions.
Facing a tight labor market and the intense competitive pressure of the round-the-clock economy, it is no surprise that companies are trying to squeeze as much as they can from their employees. What is new is that workers, including the ever-growing number of women on the job, are beginning to balk.
Ms. Bobel and thousands of other Verizon workers walked off the job over this issue, among others, during an 18-day strike last month against the telecommunications company. The workers won concessions from management on how many overtime hours it could demand and how much notice it had to give.
Under the new contract, the number of mandatory overtime hours that customer-service employees can work was cut to seven and a half a week from 15, effective immediately. For other workers, mandatory overtime is limited to 10 hours a week, effective immediately, and will be cut to eight hours a week by January. Customer-service representatives now must receive at least two and a half hours' notice before being asked to work overtime.
United Airlines depends so much on overtime by its pilots that the pilots' recent refusal to work overtime during contract negotiations forced the carrier to eliminate 3 percent of its scheduled flights from May through September. When United invoked mandatory overtime last month for its mechanics, the machinists threatened to walk away from the bargaining table and forced the airline to back down.
Traditionally, many employers have had little problem getting workers to volunteer for overtime. But in this time of prosperity, and with record numbers of women and mothers in the workplace, overtime often just is not as attractive as, for example, a night at home with the children.
''In years past, forced overtime was not much of an issue,'' said Robert Reich, former secretary of labor. ''But the new reality of the work force is that mothers and fathers are both working.'' Add to that those people who have elderly relatives to care for or who are single parents, and employer inflexibility becomes a huge concern, he said.
According to Labor Department data from 1999, 72 percent of women with children younger than 18 work outside the home, an increase of 5 percentage points since 1992. And 61 percent of women with children younger than 3 work outside the home, up 6 percentage points for the same period.
High-tech managers, software programmers and other salaried professionals may face their own time pressures, but in many cases companies have taken steps to retain such workers by allowing telecommuting or flex time or by providing on-site day care and schools. The benefits have not always trickled down, however.
''The movement toward family-friendly workplaces has largely been a movement for professional workers,'' Mr. Reich said.
''Hourly workers have largely been overlooked.''
The crux of the matter for many workers is choice. Take Ms. Bobel, for example: She picketed not for higher wages but for the ability to tell her daughters that she will see them at 6 p.m. and not have to break that promise at 5 p.m.
Or take Viola Figueroa, also at Verizon. Each time she had to change plans at the last minute, such as the time $100 theater tickets sat wasted at the bottom of her purse, she thought about whether the good pay and benefits were worth the toll on her personal life.
For the most part, Ms. Bobel and Ms. Figueroa like their jobs. They might even volunteer to work more than 40 hours a week at times. But being told they have to do so with no notice is maddening, they said.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 includes an overtime pay provision and was designed to deter employers from abusing overtime, but the provision has little or no effect today. That is because an employer's cost of recruiting and training may far outweigh the cost of paying existing employees even double time, especially in the current tight labor market, with the U.S. unemployment rate having hovered at about 4 percent since last October.
Employers say that even when they want to hire more people, they cannot find anyone, and forcing people to work overtime is usually the only option they have.
''It is cheaper now for employers to work existing workers than it is for them to incur hiring and training costs of new workers,'' said Ronald Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial and labor relations and economics at Cornell University. ''If you hire 40 workers to work one hour of overtime, you have to pay time and a half, but if you hired one new person, you'd have to worry about providing health insurance and vacation and sick time.''