Paul Coverdell: “my good colleague from Missouri, Senator John Ashcroft, recently introduced legislation that would provide increased…”

“my good colleague from Missouri, Senator John Ashcroft, recently introduced legislation that would provide increased opportunities for working parents to spend more time with their families without losing 1 cent in compensation. It is popularly called flextime. It is legislation that allows a worker an opportunity to trade time-and-a-half for just time. I think it is a very, very important piece of legislation and very timely, because there have been so many changes in the workplace. This bill would allow employees to choose to work additional hours, more than 40, in one workweek and use those extra hours to fill in for a shorter workweek later. Or an employee could choose to take time off in lieu of overtime pay at a rate of 1 hours for each hour of overtime. An employee could also choose to work 80 hours over a 2-week period in any combination. Here is the important point, Madam President, that all of these choices are voluntary. These flexible options can only be exercised if the employee and employer agree to the concept. None of these choices would result in lower pay, and, in the case of comptime off, those hours not used, up to 240 could be cashed in at overtime rate pay. The point here is no one is being shortchanged. The point is that everybody has new flexibility, in terms of managing their workweek.”