May 15, 1997
Kennedy, Clinton and the Unions:
Duplicity on Comp-Time
There seems to be no limit to President Clinton's gratitude to labor unions for their $300 million financial and in-kind electoral support in the 1996 elections. From attempting to force all contractors on federal construction projects to adopt union-only work restrictions (euphemistically called project labor agreements) to refusing to allow privatization of some aspects of the administration of welfare in Texas, Clinton has demonstrated over and over again that when it comes to labor questions he takes his orders from the AFL-CIO. The current debate over the Family-Friendly Workplace Act (S. 4) is a case in point.
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the statutory vehicle by which Congress imposes federal minimum wages and requires that when covered employees work more than forty hours in a week, they must be paid a wage equal to 1.5 times their regular wage for the overtime. The Family-Friendly Workplace Act would allow employers and employees to agree to substitute compensatory time off (comp-time) for overtime pay. Specifically, for each hour of overtime worked a worker could choose to receive 1.5 hours off, with pay, from regular work hours. No worker can be forced to take comp-time rather than overtime pay. In fact, S4 requires an employee's written approval of the exchange, and any employee can rescind such approval at any time.
In my judgment, this lifting of one of the restrictions imposed by the FLSA is an excellent proposal. Employees frequently have family responsibilities for which some time off during regular working hours without loss of pay can be very helpful. Under S.4. overtime can be a way of accumulating highly valued time-off credits. A recent poll revealed that 75 percent of all Americans favor creating a comp-time alternative to overtime pay.
Senator Kennedy (D-Mass) is leading the union/Democrat opposition to the bill in the Senate. He claims that it is a "hoax" that would "reduce the paychecks of workers who rely on overtime pay to support their families." Inasmuch as S.4 clearly prohibits any employer from forcing any employee to accept comp-time in exchange for overtime pay, the kindest thing that can be said about Kennedy's argument is that it is disingenuous.
President Clinton has promised his union creditors that he will veto the bill. His ostensible argument against the bill is not as silly as Kennedy's, but it is no more legitimate. The President objects that S. 4 requires that employers and employees must agree to substitute comp-time for overtime pay. A bureaucrat in the president's Office of Management and Budget explained, "S.4 would allow an employer to unfairly pick and choose which employees are offered compensatory time. Moreover, it would allow the employer to decide when workers use their compensatory time-off if the employer claims it would 'unduly disrupt' its operations." Clintonistas don't want employers and employees to make mutually agreeable deals. They prefer coercion to consent.
Clinton also wants any comp-time legislation to include an extension of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to require that employers grant an additional twenty-four hours per year of unpaid time-off for employees to take care of diverse family needs, such as parent-teacher conferences and taking pets to the vet. The FMLA already gives employees the unilateral privilege of determining whether and when to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for childbirth, adoption or a serious medical condition. (Actually, it is not unpaid. Employers are forced to continue to pay for health insurance for employees on FMLA leave.) Not surprisingly, the common cold has become a frequently cited "serious medical condition" to justify employee absenteeism. An AT&T spokesman recently said, "In some cases people seem to be staying home hiding behind the skirts of the law when they should be at work.... [W]e are finding that 10 percent to 15 percent of the workforce is out on a given day." Clinton seeks to exacerbate this unintended consequence of the FMLA and to extend it to comp-time.
But why are unions opposed to S.4? Unionism is based on two myths: that employers and employees are natural enemies, and that employees are helpless without unions to protect them. Quite simply, unions must, for their own preservation, quash all opportunities for employers and employees to work out mutually agreeable arrangements without union intervention. Unions are against any worker-management cooperation that is not union-management cooperation. That is why unions are opposed to employee involvement programs at union-free firms, and that is why they are against S.4. The outrage is that President Clinton is so willing to suppress voluntary and cooperative employer-employee relations just to pay back his union creditors.