The Bush Administration set out to roll back these standards and make it easier for businesses to have employees work "flexible" hours without getting overtime pay. This effort included changing the rules regarding who can be exempted from overtime pay and a failed effort in Congress to change the 40-hour work week to an 80-hour work fortnight or some other "flex-time" proposal. After a contentious debate in which both Republican-controlled houses of Congress voted against his proposal, the Bush Administration went ahead and changed the rules defining who may be exempted from overtime pay requirements. Some estimates are that millions of Americans may lose their right to overtime pay under these changes.

But not in our state. Washington is one of 18 states (including Oregon) with its own rules describing who qualifies for overtime pay, and those state rules closely mirror the federal standards in place for decades before Bush’s changes. Because the state standard exceeds the federal standard in this case -- as it does with the minimum wage, for example -- the state standard applies.

In 2003, in anticipation of Bush’s overtime pay changes, Senate Republicans in Washington pushed a bill seeking conformance between state and federal wage-and-hour laws that would not have affected the minimum wage but would have jeopardized the state overtime exemption standards. After labor’s opposition to this "stealth attack" on overtime pay and wage-and-hour standards, the bill died.

Meanwhile, wage-and-hour laws continue to be clarified by recent court decisions. In October 2007, in Stevens v. Brink’s Home Security, the Washington State Supreme Court held that Brink’s service and installation technicians who drove company vehicles from home to the first job site of the day and from the last job site of the day back home are entitled to compensation for the time they spent driving between home and the job site. The Court decided that driving in the company vehicle to and from home and job site constituted "on duty" time and that the company vehicle was a "prescribed workplace."

LABOR’S POSITION -- Overtime pay is not a luxury or a bonus of some kind, it is fair compensation that millions of American workers count on to meet their families’ basic needs. The FLSA was designed not only to reward workers who choose to work extraordinarily long hours, but to encourage employers to hire a sufficient number of workers. By all accounts, these laws have succeeded and labor sees no justification for changing them at the behest of corporate lobbying groups.

Likewise, state wage-and-hour laws set out to ensure fair, proper compensation for hours of work. There will always be employers that seek to bend those rules and take advantage of gray areas to try to save money on labor costs. As cases like Stevens v. Brink’s clarify those rules, the Washington State Labor Council will oppose any legislative attempts to take away workers’ right to compensation.

2003 -- SB 5462 would have made state wage-and-hour laws, including the rules defining who can be exempted from overtime pay, conform with federal standards. The bill was opposed by the WSLC. It passed the Senate 25-24 on a party-line vote, but died in the House.

2008 – In the wake of the Stevens v. Brink’s decision, SB 6867 attempted to change the definition of "employ" under the Washington Minimum Wage Act to exclude certain specified uses of employer-provided vehicles. The bill was supported by business lobbying groups and opposed by organized labor. It died in the Senate.