NYT: How 'Flex Time' Became a Republican Idea

[kskiska]

FOR more than three decades, feminists and other liberals have championed the idea of flex time - the concept that employees should have more freedom to adjust their work schedules to their families' needs. Such freedom would be a boon, they say, for working mothers, who may need to leave work early on one day, but could stay late on another.

On the campaign trail recently, President Bush touted his own proposal that he says would reach the same goal. It would allow employees in the private sector to choose time off instead of overtime pay, and to work more than 40 hours one week and fewer the next.

Mr. Bush explained the proposal this way during a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio: "I think the government ought to allow employers to say to an employee: 'If you want some time off, and work different hours, you're allowed to do so. If you want to accumulate time to spend with your family, spend with your parents, spend for being re-educated, you're allowed to do so.' "

The problem with this approach, feminists and other liberals say, is that it would require changing a law that guarantees unskilled workers extra pay for overtime work. "It's the abolition of overtime," said Ellen Bravo, national director of 9 to 5, an association of working women. "This is the employer flexibility protection act."

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/09/05/weekinreview/05bell.html

[DebJ]

1. and it's amazing how flex-time employers forget or deny that

you worked extra hours and are entitled to time off for compensation. Bush is presenting it from a need for families. The truth is that businesses who use 'flex time' (legally or not) say, hey, work for me extra today and I'll let you take off later. Yeah, right. My ex-husband put in two weeks of unpaid overtime...that's a lot of money...in exchange for flex time that the boss later said, never happened. I don't owe you a thing. At his employer was the University of Maryland (long time ago...sheesh...1970's).

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. I get the "I'll make it up to you " all the time

Then, when the day comes, they want all the vacation paperwork instead, since no "records" are kept for this time.

[DebJ]

3. slave labor, pure and simple.

[Kool Kitty]

4. Exactly. It goes hand-in-hand with the change

in the overtime rules.

[oneighty]

11. Yes indeed

At a university where I was employed-forty to fifty extra hours a week uncompensated in any form was the norm.

Take it or leave it.

180

[DBoon]

5. It's only flexible for the employer

They can stretch the working day as long as they wish.

[JCMach1]

6. Not really FLEXtime...

It is Comp time and most Employers have it disappear after one month (you cannot collect it). It is always at your employer's convenience.

[jdj]

7. yes, thank you, the C word.

Flex time came about with the family in mind, comp time is 'I'm fucking you by working you to death this week, and if it's convenient for me I'll fuck you by starving you the next'.

[ixion]

8. yep, that was my thought as well...

but hey, who's to say that BushCo has ever stuck to the definition of anything except the definitions of liar, murderer and theif?

[Eloriel]

9. Looks like a Good article

I especially like the eyebrow: Working Class Warfare

[Hotler]

10. Baby steps toward the way labor was in the 1880's.

get rid of overtime, throw out the 8-hour work day and the 40-hour work week. Make everyone work 12-hours a day, 6 days a week. Make it OK to hire kids. Give the workers Sunday off, but close the bars, ban groups and families from gathering in the parks and such to prevent them for trying to organize. Call out the police and allow them to bust heads of men,women, children young and old that protested poor working conditions. We are entering a new era of robber barons.

[LiberalFighter]

12. The key word is "allow" not "require"

Allowing someone to do something doesn't mean that they will or have to do it.

[struggle4progress]

13. kick for yet another plan to screw ordinary workers

:kick:

[ploppy]

14. That is

a pretty damn nervey thing for him to say. More lies.

[TankLV]

15. I had an employer than wanted me to only total my hours to 40 per week

on my time sheet because I was salaried and that is what I was paid.

I continued to post ALL my hours so it would be part of my record.

Never complained when I stayed overtime, but let me be a few minutes late because of personal reasons - or take off because I was sick - that was a big hassle.

I let him have it both barrels when he tried to cheat me - and also got ALL my hours compensated - no time and a half because I'm salaried, but hours none the less.

When I had my heart attack, his first words out of his mouth were "You're not taking time off are you?" not "are you OK?". My partner was furious with him.

I had it on a Wednesday, was back to work on a Monday - supposed to work half days at most, but guess what I really worked - you got it - almost normeal 8 hour days

And if we didn't use it withing a specified time frame, we'd lose it.

I made sure I kept a running track of it for all the years I worked for them regardless - came in handy for funerals, etc. when he'd throw his usual bitch.

I now have a much better job, where they kick me out if I don't feel well - more bennies, bigger salary, etc.

My current empployers are Democrats, and the previous one was a repuke (what a cooincidence!).

[Clovis Sangrail]

16. salaried vs. hourly

I let him have it both barrels when he tried to cheat me - and also got ALL my hours compensated - no time and a half because I'm salaried, but hours none the less.


If you were paid for the hours you worked you were not salaried.

If you were "salaried", and normally got paid for your hours but not for overtime, you done got screwed.

Being salaried is not a guarantee that you will do as well as you would hourly, and doesn't even make sense for most jobs.

For other jobs though, it can work out well.

I've been salaried and working extreme flextime for years.

The upside is I have no fixed start or stop time.
I can sleep in, or go bike riding instead wasting a beautiful day in front of a computer.

The downside is I have no fixed start or stop time.
If I have to work 16 hours straight to finish a project, or go in at 3 am ... that's the way it goes.

[0007]

17. In other words the Labor Laws have been trashed by junior and his thugs

Overtime was the penalty that corporations paid for overtime. They didn't like it so they figured out a way to screw the worker and reward the CEO's with a large pay check for coming up with a swell idea.

When in the living fuck are the people of this country gonna get angry?

[Radius]

18. Salary vs. Hourly

As a salaried employee my time is not tracked. I could be a assistant manager at wendys or a systems administrator. A SA making 5 times what a wendy's manager does may get his comp, and flex but the manager may not. Unfair imho.

Hourly rules are different. Time is tracked, usually by computer and an electronic time card. Overtime is managed by an algorithm, no way to cheat it.

The biggest factor I have found working as both hourly and salaried is your manager. A good manager will take care of you and see you are treated fairly. A shitty one, well.