Another summer day dawns, and I would give my left arm, front tooth and pinky toe for freedom - freedom to lounge around, freedom from work. And so it floors me that the unions have just killed a bill that would have given working stiffs who put in overtime the option of taking extra days off. So-called labor advocates say they were protecting our right, chiseled in law, to receive time-and-a-half pay after working more than a 40-hour week. Thing is, that right was not in jeopardy.
The legislation would have offered workers a choice: the traditional time-and-a-half in pay or time-and-a-half in time. People making $15 an hour who punched in 44 hours could add $90 to their paycheck or six hours to their vacation.
Why would organized labor oppose giving the serfs some measure of control over time at the grindstone? Was it that Republicans had backed the legislation? Or the Chamber of Commerce supported it? Perhaps the unions gagged on the bill's syrupy name: The Family Time Flexibility Act.
I wondered whether I had missed some fine print in the bill that should have turned me against it. The unions had to have reasons. A close reading of their arguments reveals that they do, but their explanations have little basis in economic reality.
The AFL-CIO's main objection to the proposal is that employers would pressure workers to take comp time for overtime work, instead of extra pay. It's a way for them to save money at the workers' expense. On the surface, that sounds plausible. But when you look at the structure of compensation in America today, you see that the opposite result is more likely.
History shows that when business gets hot, most employers prefer paying workers overtime to the alternative - which is hiring more people. That's because taking on a new worker entails a lot of upfront costs, such as health coverage. In other words, it's cheaper to pay 40 workers time-and-a-half for an extra hour than to hire another employee to do the same 40-hour job.
Testifying against the bill, Ellen Bravo, director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, said that the overtime provision requiring time-and-a-half pay "was a disincentive to excessive hours." That may have been the intention in 1938, when the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed. But it's a rather toothless protection today.
During the boom times of the late '90s, factory workers averaged five hours a week of overtime work. Some workers were forced to put in 70-hour weeks. These monstrous schedules produced fat paychecks, but they ruined the employees' home life and health.
Strikes broke out as angry workers demanded reasonable hours. In one famous case, 185 workers walked off the job at FMC Corp.'s Baltimore factory after the company refused to limit their workweek to 68 hours.
The flex-time law could have instantly solved these workers' problem. They could have insisted on getting overtime vacation, instead of overtime pay. And the company would have had no option but to hire more people.
Today's weak economy has shrunk the demand for overtime, but the principle remains. Any employer short-staffed enough to order overtime work has no obvious incentive to encourage people to take more time off, thus stretching personnel even thinner.
Labor advocates have another rap against the proposal: It would require workers to give the boss some notice before using the comp time. Thus, employers would have final say on when the time is taken. Of course, workers can't just disappear. Bosses have their staffing needs. (After all, we arrange vacation times with our supervisors, don't we?) And in any case, anyone displeased over the schedule could simply demand payment for overtime in the form of coin.
Honestly, I don't get it. The bill was written to expire in five years. So, if it didn't work out, and people were unhappy, the overtime rules would go back to what we have today.
No doubt there are laborers who, through need or desire, yearn to make bigger bucks working overtime. But poll after poll shows that harried Americans would joyfully trade in some money for more free time. Labor leaders seem to have little idea of how badly American workers want a life.
Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's e-mail address is fharrop at projo.com