Political Quotes

“This really is an insidious bill. I've been listening to the debate on the floor, Mr. Speaker, and I have to tell you there are some things I heard that I think need correcting. First of all, median hourly wages in this country are $12.80 an hour. That's about $26,000 a year. And what that means is that for most workers, for some of our workers who are hourly workers, this bill really goes at the heart of the 40-hour workweek. In fact, what it does is it puts in jeopardy some of our most vulnerable in the workforce. Ninety percent of our hourly workers don't work under collective bargaining agreements, and that means that they don't have the protections that public sector workers have who get to enjoy comp time when it's available to them. They really do need the time and a half. It's not like the other side is proposing that we have earned sick leave, earned vacation, earned maternity leave. Instead, they want to take away pay and get a no-interest loan from workers instead of paying them time and a half for their overtime. There's no flexibility. The power is only in the hands of the employer who gets to decide when the comp time can be taken, whether it can be taken, and how it should be paid.”