I was looking at the AFL-CIO web site where they talk about two competing proposals to screw workers out of their overtime pay, one coming from the White House and the other coming from the House of Reporesentatives (HR 1119). I downloaded the 39-page PDF about the White House proposal from the Department of Labor:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/proposed/2003033101.pdf
and unless I'm mistaken this applies to me, and to any of the other foremen on the site where I've been working lately. I think that's what it says anyway, but I'm kind of vague on this, mainly due to these God damned 6:00 AM to 7:45 PM work days I've been putting in these last few months, which have dulled my wits dismally. A life? what's that? We pray for rain. Everybody on this jobsite is working tons of OT; my last two-weeks paycheck was for 135 hours.
Just imagine how I and my fellow filthy workies would react were we informed that, thanks to new Bushco legislation, we were about to lose all our hard-earned OT. In fact I almost hope the bastards ram this one through, because if they do I guarantee lots of Republicans would be booted out in the next election. I can hardly believe that Karl Rove let them pull this prior to 2005. Hell, even to have suggested shafting America's OT slaves would certainly overshadow showbiz crap like Chimpy's gay-ass tailhook stunt. A lot of my fellow workies are pretty dim, and easily led, about political affairs, but they're not totally numb; kick 'em in the OT and they're sure to jump up and notice.
Can somebody here please point me in the direction of an official-looking concise precis of these proposed changes in the overtime laws? Something with clear details and exact numbers? Max, EPI, anybody? Something I can print out lots and lots of copies of, to hand out to all my fellow wage-slaves. A campaign about this (back-to-back with a discussion of the second round of mega-tax-cuts for millionaires) could really be the swing issue in the 2004 election.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net