GOP Targets Nonunion Workers’ Overtime

One of the GOP’s highest priorities for this year will be passage of a bill abolishing California’s requirement that employers pay their nonunion employees overtime for working more than eight hours in a day, Republican Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle said Friday.

Assembly Republicans approved legislation this week repealing state law requiring that workers receive time and a half pay for work in excess of eight hours in a day and double-time pay for work beyond 12 hours. The bill, AB 398, now heads to the state Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority, and where similar legislation stalled last year.

“I celebrate that bill,” Pringle said at a news conference assessing GOP gains in the Assembly this week. “If you want to truly focus on how California is not competitive in this country, focus on that bill.”

Pringle said California is one of only four states with the requirement--Alaska, Nevada and Wyoming are the others--and that it denies flexibility to employers and employees.

But while the measure is near the top of the GOP’s new majority agenda, it’s also at the top of the Democrats’ hit list. Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) said the bill would impose a “government-ordered pay cut for struggling working families at a time when corporate profits are already soaring.

“These guys are always giving lip service to family values, and then they launch this attack on working families. What hypocrisy,” Lockyer said in a statement.

Under California law, nonunion workers who are paid by the hour must receive overtime when they put in more than eight hours in a day. Overtime for union workers is covered by their labor contracts.

The bill by Assemblyman Fred Aguiar (R-Redlands) would apply to nonunion hourly workers and some salaried employees, such as secretaries. Democrats estimate the measure would affect 8 million workers in the state.

The measure would leave intact federal work rules that require the payment of overtime for time on the job in excess of 40 hours a week. However, GOP-sponsored legislation pending in Congress would ease the 40-hour rule. One proposal would require that workers receive overtime only if they work more than 160 hours a month.

If the California bill becomes law, part-time hourly employees would never receive overtime pay, Pringle acknowledged. But, he added, if the law is changed, companies would become more profitable and hire more full-time workers.

Pringle said the bill is necessary particularly in Southern California, where many employers and employees want four-day workweeks, which require 10-hour days. He dismissed concerns that employers would ask workers to put in excessively long shifts.

The measure is being pushed hard by the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers’ Assn., two of the most influential lobbying groups in Sacramento, as well as major employers such as Rockwell International.

“It’s my No. 1 priority,” said Willie Washington, lobbyist for the manufacturers association. “It has built to the point where employers are sick and tired of having to operate under these restrictive work orders.”

Washington said some manufacturers want to institute 12-hour shifts, three days one week and four days in another week.

Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), who chaired the Assembly Labor Committee before Republicans seized control of the lower house last month, said hourly workers making $30,000 a year earn, on average, about $1,612 of that from overtime pay.

“What is brazen and unprecedented about this,” Knox said, “is that they have concluded that workers making $30,000 a year are overpaid.”