little as they maybe. I'm sure Congressman Gephardt would oppose this move--but--he opposed NAFTA, China PNTR, WTO too!
Tom Lehman
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> New York Times 17 September 2000
>
> Overtime Rises, Making Fatigue a Labor Issue
>
> By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
>
> In his last two and a half days of life, Brent Churchill slept a
> total of five hours. The rest of the time he was working.
>
> Mr. Churchill, a lineman on call one stormy weekend for Central Maine
> Power, worked two back-to-back shifts on Friday, went to bed at 10:30
> p.m., was called back at 1 a.m. Saturday, caught a quick nap around
> dawn and went back to his job clambering up and down poles for almost
> 24 hours straight. Taking a break for breakfast on Sunday morning, he
> got yet another call.
>
> At about noon, he climbed a 30-foot pole, hooked on his safety straps
> and reached for a 7,200-volt cable without first putting on his
> insulating gloves. There was a flash, and Mr. Churchill was hanging
> motionless by his straps. His father, arriving before the
> ladder-truck did and thinking his son might still be alive, stood at
> the foot of the pole for more than an hour begging for somebody to
> bring his boy down.
>
> The death of a 30-year-old lineman from remote Industry, Me., might
> have gone unnoticed beyond family, friends and the woman he had
> planned to marry in June, but for a coincidence: Mr. Churchill
> happened to die at a time of heightened public concern about the
> expanding workweek - a time, in fact, when the Maine legislature had
> been debating whether to cap the amount of mandatory overtime allowed
> in the state.
>
> The bill was not exactly a clarion call for worker ease, placing the
> overtime limit at 96 hours within any three-week period. The governor
> had already vetoed two versions, and there had not been enough votes
> in the Senate to override him. But the outcry over Mr. Churchill's
> death lent new momentum to efforts to cap overtime. The lawmakers
> compromised on a cap of 80 hours in any two-week period, and in May,
> Maine became the first state in the nation to limit the number of
> hours an employee can be required to work.
>
> But it is not the first to recognize the problem of physical
> exhaustion on the job in the tightest labor market in almost half a
> century. Although Maine faced an especially stark catalyst in Mr.
> Churchill's case, elsewhere around the nation, in courthouses and
> state legislatures, on picket lines and at negotiating tables, a
> backlash is building against the new economy's voracious appetite for
> Americans' time.
>
> West Virginia and Pennsylvania recently debated but deferred action
> on bills that would allow workers to refuse overtime without being
> punished. Washington State lawmakers considered a Maine-style
> overtime cap earlier this year but it died in committee.
>
> New Jersey legislators had greater success with a narrower bill,
> voting in June to ban mandatory overtime in hospitals; the bill now
> awaits Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's signature. California started
> counting overtime after an eight-hour day, rather than a 40-hour
> week, though lawmakers there are now being bombarded with calls to
> exempt ski lodges, hospitals, construction sites and many other
> workplaces.
>
> The expanding workweek has become a flashpoint for some unions,
> though not all. Studies show that most employees who qualify for
> overtime premiums still want the extra hours. This lack of consensus
> on whether the workweek is too long or too short is one reason most
> state efforts to cap overtime have faltered.
>
> The labor groups now taking a stand on the workweek tend to be those
> representing either workers with safety issues, like pilots and
> firefighters, or large numbers of women, who often feel the work-time
> pinch more acutely.
>
> A strike by telephone workers against Verizon this summer was
> motivated in large part by overtime issues; women in the company's
> calling centers complained that they could not break free from work
> early enough to pick up their children or make dinner for their
> families. Firefighters in Connecticut recently challenged the
> constitutionality of mandatory overtime, arguing unsuccessfully that
> it violated the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. Nurses in several New
> York hospitals now sign protest statements when they start their
> shifts, creating a paper trail of their mandatory workloads.
>
> Congress has also been grappling with the issue of the expanding
> workweek, though much of its effort is aimed not at workers but at
> helping employers who seek to reduce the associated labor costs.
> Several attachments to the pending minimum-wage legislation would
> disqualify technology workers, sales personnel and others from
> receiving overtime pay. Another provision would allow businesses to
> reduce overtime payments to virtually all qualifying employees.
>
> Labor's fight for relief from onerous working hours dates back more
> than a century - and its victories have been hard won. From 1886,
> when a potent eight-hour movement exploded in street violence in the
> Chicago Haymarket, it took 52 years for American society to agree on
> a 40-hour workweek with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act
> in 1938. But now, the strains that the booming economy is putting on
> workers, especially women, are reopening the debate.
>
> "Overwork has been an issue for quite a while," said Peter Rachleff,
> a history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul. "But whether
> workers have felt it was an issue they could address or not has
> changed in the last year."
>
> For all the rumblings of discontent, it is difficult to quantify
> Americans' workload. Federal statistics show that Americans are
> working record levels of overtime, but the data tracks only hourly
> manufacturing workers, who make up a shrinking share of today's work
> force.
>
> The average American employee works just two more hours a week than
> in 1982, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Randy E.
> Ilg, a senior economist at the bureau, said that figure probably
> understated the problem because women have been surging into the work
> force, and their generally shorter hours appear to have pulled down
> the average.
>
> Only in the workweek statistics for households does the increase jump
> off the page, Mr. Ilg said.
>
> "Twenty years ago, you had one person in the household working," he
> said. "Today you've got two. And who goes to the grocery store now?
> Who takes the check to the bank on the weekend? Who does the dishes
> after dinner?"
>
> Other features of the new economy compound the sense of pressure.
> Samuel Bacharach, a professor at Cornell University's School of
> Industrial and Labor Relations, found that workers who are most
> worried about downsizing are the ones most likely to load up on
> overtime. Central Maine Power had, in fact, laid off 37 linemen
> several years before Brent Churchill was killed, his mother said, and
> was timing the performances of those remaining.
>
> "He took that job seriously," his mother, Donna Churchill, said.
>
> The increased use of cellular phones, laptops and beepers also makes
> Americans feel like they are working more, Mr. Ilg said. So do
> today's longer commutes.
>
> David Kavanagh, who recently held a job maintaining cooling systems
> for the Grand Union supermarket chain, knows this better than most.
>
> Each evening, Grand Union would call Mr. Kavanagh at his home in
> Patchogue, N.Y., and tell him which supermarket he should appear at
> by 8 a.m. the next day. Most of his trips required him to drive the
> length of traffic-clogged Long Island and through New York City
> during morning rush hour. Some days, his commute took nine hours.
>
> "There was no fast way he could get where he was going," said his
> wife, Tara Kavanagh, a lawyer. "He would sometimes leave at 4:30 in
> the morning and not be home until 10 o'clock at night."
>
> Represented by his wife, Mr. Kavanagh sued Grand Union, demanding
> compensation for his travel time. In June, the court ruled, in a
> split decision, that while his situation was "inequitable," the law
> held no relief because a 1947 provision specifies that employers do
> not have to pay for "normal" commutes. (The dissenting judge said Mr.
> Kavanagh's commute was not normal.)
>
> Mr. Kavanagh was eventually fired. "I smiled all the way home," he
> said. Today, he works as a machinist - a 10-minute drive from home.
>
> For all the travails of blue-collar workers like him, the people
> putting in the longest hours these days are white-collar workers on
> salary, Mr. Ilg said. Their ranks have been swelled by the
> information economy: 60 percent of the jobs created in the last 10
> years are managerial and professional positions. Many of these people
> toil in a legal twilight zone, often performing duties that did not
> exist in 1938, when Congress drew clear-cut distinctions between
> workers and managers. The law is silent on how such workers should be
> compensated for their long hours, if at all.
>
> Many businesses classify them as managers and executives, paying them
> a fixed salary with no premium for overtime. But many of them say
> their hours make them feel more like production workers on an
> assembly line. Some are demanding to be paid accordingly.
>
> Alan Truex, a sportswriter for The Houston Chronicle, had a job doing
> something most people would hardly consider to be work: He watched
> hours and hours of baseball. Following the Houston Astros on the
> road, he racked up enough frequent-flier miles to take his wife on
> the occasional foreign trip. Team owners invited the couple to lavish
> celebrity parties.
>
> But for all the glitz, the long hours began to wear on Mr. Truex,
> recalled Phyllis Truex, his former wife. From spring training in
> February until the end of the World Series in October, he devoted an
> average 51 hours a week to watching baseball and writing stories, and
> that was not counting the constant travel. His marriage began to
> unravel. His elderly parents fell ill and died, and he was not able
> to spend as much time with them as he wanted, Ms. Truex said.
>
> Mr. Truex asked his employer for overtime pay. His boss replied that
> he was a salaried professional and not entitled to the premium. The
> next time Mr. Truex asked, he had a copy of the federal overtime law
> in his hand and a tape recorder hidden in his jacket. Again, his boss
> said no.
>
> Mr. Truex sued Hearst Communications Inc., the Chronicle's parent
> company, entering his timelogs and a transcript of his conversations
> as evidence. The Chronicle settled with him out of court. Mr. Truex
> is barred by the agreement from discussing any aspect of the case,
> but other Houston media have reported that he received $300,000 to
> $500,000. He also remains an employee of the paper, reviewing
> restaurants out of his home.
>
> Bob Carlquist, The Chronicle's vice president for administration and
> human resources, declined to comment, saying the paper never
> discusses disputes with employees.
>
> It is precisely that sort of dispute that the current Congressional
> bills are meant to preclude. Measures now under consideration
> identify several types of information-economy workers - including
> computer network analysts and database administrators and even
> funeral directors - and specifically define them as management,
> barred from receiving overtime pay.
>
> Yet another provision being considered would go further, allowing
> employers to reduce workers' regular pay and make up the difference
> in bonuses. Employees' total pay for every hour worked would be
> unchanged, but overtime compensation would fall since it would be
> calculated on a lower wage.
>
> Advocates of these provisions say they would enhance American
> competitiveness. Opponents worry, though, that the changes are poorly
> understood by the public and are going largely unchallenged by
> organized labor. The provisions are under discussion as part of
> coalition-building for the proposed $1 increase in the minimum wage,
> which is expected to be passed this fall.
>
> Should the measures be enacted, two things would happen, said Edward
> Montgomery, deputy secretary of labor. Many workers would see their
> income shrink, he said, "and second, who knows how many hours they
> would be compelled to work to make it up?"