Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, under current law, if an employee wants to work overtime, put the money in the bank where it can earn interest, and use it to cover the cost of taking some time off later with the permission of the employer, he can do that today without this bill. But under H.R. 1180, instead of getting paid for overtime work in the next scheduled paycheck, the employee might not get paid until as much as a year later, when his employer decides to let him take that comp time. This legislation simply weakens the protections available in the Fair Labor Standards Act--the original family-friendly workplace law--at the very moment that we really ought to be strengthening the law. Under H.R. 1180, it would be legal to withhold workers' overtime pay for a long time. This would be otherwise a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The bill would allow you to undermine the 40-hour workweek by creating a mechanism that allows employees to earn time off to be with their families only if they spend extra time at work beyond a 40-hour workweek. It undermines a worker's ability to earn overtime pay, which many workers rely on to send their children to college, save for retirement, or make a down payment on a house.…”