Valley Workers Say Wage Plan Will Cost Them

It only took a second for Mark Nguyen to calculate what Friday’s proposed change in overtime rules would mean for him.

“It means I lose,” said the 23-year-old salesman for JC Penney Co. in Northridge.

Supporters of Friday’s historic recommendation to do away with the state’s 79-year-old overtime rules say it could benefit both workers and management.

But in the San Fernando Valley, hourly wage-earners were more likely to react with dejection and frustration--even as their bosses applauded.

Nguyen works part time--about 35 hours a week--but often works 10-hour shifts if the store is busy, which qualifies him for overtime.

But under the proposal tentatively approved by the California Industrial Welfare Commission on Friday, hourly employees would no longer get overtime for putting in more than eight hours of work in a day.

Instead, the commission has proposed that Californians work under the less-stringent federal standard, which requires overtime only if an hourly worker puts in more than 40 hours in a given week.

Supporters say the new system would give both employers and workers more flexibility in scheduling. But for Nguyen, it means the few extra dollars of overtime he counts on every week would disappear.

And for Allan Carley, a 48-year-old Woodland Hills accountant, the news was one more reason to feel insecure.

Carley, who has an MBA, explained that he had been laid off from a salaried $60,000-per-year job recently and now works as a temporary accountant, farmed out for a few months at a time to different companies at two-thirds his former salary.

“It’s not unusual for me to work 10, 11, 12 hours a day at the end of the month,” he said.

Overtime pay helps make up for lower pay and no benefits as a temporary employee. But if the rules change, employers will simply use different workers on different days to avoid paying extra, he said.

“It’s very frustrating. As it is, we are just trying to keep the wolf away from our door,” he said.

Organized labor throughout the state has banded against the proposed changes. “It’s just not right,” explained Wally Keske, secretary-treasurer of the Affiliated Property Craftspersons Local No. 44 in North Hollywood, which represents set builders and other construction workers in the film industry.

“All of these years, the eight-hour day has been the norm,” he said. “You go beyond that and you are pushing the envelope on people’s health and safety.”

But Steve Armstrong, owner of Lee Armstrong Co., a commercial flooring contractor in Chatsworth, said the proposed changes would go a long way toward improving California’s reputation for being unfriendly to business interests.

The eight-hour-plus overtime rule is a headache, he said. “We do a job a day, and you have to finish the job. You can’t just leave,” he said.

Overtime now makes up about 30% of his payroll costs. If he could give employees time off once they finished a job, he might eliminate overtime completely, he said.

His views were echoed by George Gelinas, president of Foothill Auto Electric, a Pacoima company that rebuilds alternators.

Last summer, Gelinas got a visit from state labor officials because he was paying his 97 employees overtime by the week rather than by the day, as the law requires.

He changed his ways, and his payroll costs shot up by about 20%, he said.

“This is a demand business. It’s not consistent. We get orders, and we have to fill them,” Gelinas explained. “Why should I have to pay extra money because they are working an extra hour?”