BUSH ADMINISTRATION OVERTIME TAKEAWAY

WHEREAS, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates that employers pay overtime to employees working excessive hours, so as to discourage employers from unduly increasing employees' workloads without fair compensation; and

WHEREAS, in March of 2003 the Bush administration proposed the most sweeping revision of federal wage and hour regulations in the history of the FLSA that would have stripped over eight million Americans of overtime protections; and

WHEREAS, in its continuing effort to destroy worker protections achieved over decades by the labor movement, the Bush administration, as part of its proposal, advised employers how to deny overtime protections to low-wage workers and veterans; and

WHEREAS, bipartisan majorities of both the House and Senate voted to reject the provisions of the Bush administration proposal stripping workers of overtime rights; and

WHEREAS, the final Bush administration FLSA regulation will allow hourly workers to be denied overtime rights for the first time in the history of the law; and

WHEREAS, contrary to the clear intent of the FLSA, the final regulation allows employers to decide whether to provide private sector workers compensatory time off instead of pay; and

WHEREAS, an estimated 400,000 AFT members, including more than 65,000 healthcare professionals were at risk of losing overtime under this proposal; and

WHEREAS, hundreds of thousands of state and local government workers and school personnel may be reclassified as executives, administrative managers and professionals who may be denied overtime protections; and

WHEREAS, teachers and childcare workers serving students ranging from nursery school age to postsecondary education may be denied overtime regardless of how little they earn or how their pay is determined:

RESOLVED, that the AFT continue to petition federal officials, elected and appointed, to remedy the loss of overtime protections resulting from this regulation; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT, via its state and local affiliates, petition state and local governments to adopt overtime protections to prevent workers from losing these rights as a result of the Bush administration's final regulation; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT work to educate its members about the impact of these FLSA regulations on their rights and those of the American workforce; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT urge its local affiliates to include explicit overtime protections in all future contracts.