Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1406, Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlelady for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, which should be called the More Work, Less Pay bill.

As my colleagues know, last week Majority Leader Cantor outlined his party's agenda for the month of May. The words he used to describe it was as a ``full legislative agenda,'' yet here we are only debating this bill on the floor of the House and I think finishing the business of the House around 1:30 p.m. today with plenty of time for Members of Congress to play golf, to go to the beach, whatever they want to do. This is hardly a full legislative agenda.

Let me add, Madam Speaker, that this bill is about overtime. Under this current legislative agenda, Congress wouldn't even come close to qualifying for overtime at a time when we have increasing national needs, balancing the budget, moving forward with jobs and the economy, comprehensive immigration reform. There are so many issues crying out for our attention, but here we are debating yet another bill that not only won't go anywhere, but also would actually make life harder and more unpredictable for American families.

This bill claims to provide working families flexibility, but in reality it allows employers to avoid paying overtime and get interest-free loans from their own employees.

There are many hourly employees who struggle holding two or three jobs, depending on overtime to pay bills, to keep food on the family table. If this bill were to become law, employers would be able to save a couple of bucks by essentially requiring people, in effect, to take comp time instead of overtime pay if they want extra hours.

Many American workers want to work more, not less. Under this bill, people's paychecks would be reduced and people don't have a real choice. It's no wonder that the vast majority of labor unions and workers oppose this bill and are not asking for this bill or this ``kind of help.''

I also want to correct something that has been claimed by my Republican colleagues, that somehow this bill gives private sector employees the same protections as public sector employees. That is not true. Most public sector workers are already protected against arbitrary and unfair treatment by civil service laws. Private sector workers don't have anything like that kind of protection.

That's why my colleague, Mr. Tim Bishop of New York, offered an amendment in committee specifying that private sector employers could provide comp time instead of overtime if they provided the same job security protections that public employees already receive. But this amendment was voted down in the Rules Committee yesterday, and we're not even allowed here on the floor of the House, where we're going to finish by 1:30 p.m., to have a debate. Somehow, there is not even enough time. Ten minutes is all we asked for on Mr. Bishop of New York's amendment.

Madam Speaker, the presentation of this bill is not consistent with the content of the bill. Of course it sounds good. Why wouldn't employees want the choice of being able to choose how they take their time? It all sounds good.

But like so many things that Congress does, the devil is in the details.

Contrary to what this bill says, employers can already give their employees time off if they so choose. Many do. We had Representative Joe Courtney in our Rules Committee yesterday who talked about when he was in the private sector and he had employees who had to attend school meetings, et cetera, he gave them time off. That's what most responsible employers do. We don't need legislation to tell employers it's okay to give their employees comp time.

Contrary to what the majority party here in the House says, employees wouldn't get paid under this bill until the end of the year for saved comp time--at no interest. No interest. So effectively, an interest-free loan to the company. Let's say an employee does overtime, works 45 hours a week for 3 weeks, accruing 15 hours of overtime. If they want this so-called flexibility that's provided under this bill, they choose to say, ``I may use this as comp time.'' That's their choice. However, they pay dearly for that choice in a number of ways.

Number one, if they don't use that comp time after a year, they get paid the original amount by the company. While it is true that if they got a raise in the intervening period, they get paid at that level of the raise, there is no accounting for interest or the net present value of those dollars. That's less of an impact when inflation is 1 or 2 percent, but still, it's an interest-free loan to the company. There's a much greater impact should interest rates ever return to their historical norms. And it wasn't that long ago that interest rates were in the high single digits, even double digits, effectively taking money from the worker and giving it to the company.

Number two, let's say the employer does want to use this comp time. Effectively, the employer has a unilateral veto over that. All they have to do is show that it creates undue disruption. That's the standard of unilateral employer veto.

Now, this is nothing like what occurs under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the FMLA. We've heard them say it's the same; it's not. Under FMLA it's a factor that leave doesn't create undue disruption. There's a variety of factors. It's not a sole determinant as determined by the employer.

In this case, the language is wide open to effectively provide a complete veto right of when that employee takes their time off. So again, our friend works 45 hours a weeks for 3 weeks, accrues 15 hours of overtime, and they get sold on this program. They say, ``I'll set aside the 15 hours.'' They try to take it off for their kid's birthday, they try to take it off when their kid is home from school. The employer says, ``No, you can't take it off that week.'' So it turns out that at the end of the year they still have their 15 hours. They finally get paid, but because of net present value and interest, they are out 2 or 3 percent of that. Again, with higher interest, they could be out 10 percent. They could be out 15 percent of that. We can and must do better for American workers.

This bill would have a devastating impact for workers in my home State of Colorado. Me and my staff talked to Debbie Olander from United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 7. Debbie is a leader in our community, and she told me that wage step is already a big problem for workers in Colorado, and this bill would make it easier for employers to avoid overtime obligations and make it harder for employees who need those hours to pay those bills.

What happens if the employer goes out of business in the intervening year? Of course, the person whose wages are due can line up with other creditors, but who has the time or, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, the ability to wait to see if you ever get paid by a bankrupt employer? Instead of improving the lives of working families by giving greater flexibility, this bill allows employers to avoid paying overtime.

My Democratic colleagues on the Education and Workforce Committee and I agree that we must give working families flexibility to meet workplace and family needs. That's why we support bills like the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help ensure that women are paid as much as men in the workplace, and the Healthy Families Act, which would establish a national paid sick day standard.

I've also heard from hundreds of workers from my district and across the country who support the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In more than half of the States, it's still perfectly legal in this day and age for an employer to fire an employee just because they're gay and what they do in their off work time. It's none of the employer's business who an employee is dating. To think that in this day and age it's legal in half the States for an employer to fire an employee because of who they're dating is absolutely absurd. We need to solve that by passing the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.

American workers are asking for these kinds of protections, unlike this sort of program that's being discussed today, which workers oppose or don't see as necessary. Well, you know, based on again the schedule for Congress, me and my colleagues aren't about to accrue any overtime anytime soon unless things change around here. Here we are, examining bills that are catchy, have good titles, might sound good on the surface, but don't address any of the real issues faced by American workers, the American economy, or our country as a whole. We need an agenda that's consistent with the needs of working families.

Madam Speaker, despite this fixation on changing the image and appealing to voters, many on the other side of the aisle seem to be recycling old ideas. In fact, an identical version of this bill was introduced in 1996, 1997, and 2003. It failed to pass the House each time. Madam Speaker, what this body needs is not just new branding, it needs new ideas, ideas that will actually help working families and make our country stronger.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Before further yielding, I yield myself a moment to respond.

I thank the gentlelady for the correction. What I was referring to is the vote in the Rules Committee yesterday on an open rule which we voted on in committee. Had we considered this bill under an open rule, I or Mr. Bishop, or any other Member of this body, could have brought forth his amendment.

You're correct, it was not submitted to the Rules Committee. It was offered in the committee of jurisdiction, on which I also serve. And I argued, you might recall, to the chair yesterday that this bill is a fine candidate for an open rule. Given that there's nothing else this body's doing today and we're getting done at 1:30, we might as well allow amendments like Mr. Bishop's and others to be able to be debated by the House and considered by the full House.

I also want to discuss something that the gentlelady said, something about how a mischaracterization of the opponents of this bill is somehow saying the private sector is bad or the government's good. I haven't heard anybody argue that. The private sector is great. The private sector is a chief engine of economic growth. This discussion is about the private sector.

In fact, it's the other side that's somehow trying to model policies that they say already exist in the public sector and force the private sector to comply with them. We're not here seeking to try to copy what exists in the public sector and apply it to the private sector. The private sector is the primary engine of economic growth.

I think where perhaps we disagree is that I hear from many on the other side that somehow government is bad. I believe, and many on my side believe, that the minimum amount of government is necessary to ensure the success of the private sector, to ensure the rules are followed and there's an open and competitive environment that allows the private sector to thrive and succeed and create jobs for American families.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Before further yielding, I want to address this fallacious concept that the gentlelady from North Carolina has brought up in previous debate as well as this one that somehow the White House discriminates against women. Again, that's been proven as untrue. We actually have a young lady on our Rules Committee staff who worked for the White House and tells us she earned the same amount as men.

Of course, for the same job, women get paid the same amount. That's what paycheck fairness is about. It doesn't say if you do a different job you get paid the same amount, and it doesn't mean that every man and every woman is compensated the same. It's just for the same job, same pay. As for the Obama administration, every one of their actions and the White House's actions have been consistent with that. We believe it should apply to the private sector because, of course, not every woman in the country has the privilege of working for the White House.

We're talking about American families with real private sector jobs out there, not these government jobs that the other side keeps alluding to.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps.)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Before further yielding, I want to again address this great and sudden desire that the gentlelady from North Carolina has expressed to make sure that government policies apply to the private sector, to try to say somehow the way that government employees are treated needs to be the way that every private sector employee is treated. Usually it's the private sector that leads the way, not Big Government like the gentlelady from North Carolina is arguing. In fact, it's even a misinterpretation of what the public sector does.

The public sector has civil service protections for its employees. That's something that doesn't exist in the private sector. That's why, if we had been able to, under an open rule--which we don't have because, of course, somehow this body has to finish up by 2 p.m. so everybody can go home. But if we were allowed to have an open rule and actually bring forth amendments on this, we would be able to introduce Mr. Bishop's amendment, which would have facilitated this discussion of, well, if it's good enough for the goose, it's good enough for the gander. If the Republicans are so keen to apply public sector personnel policy to the private sector, then why not apply civil service protections to the private sector?

Again, the truth of the matter is there's a night-and-day difference between the types of protections and policies that public sector and private sector employees have. One of the goals of the Civil Service Act was to add a degree of professionalism to public sector jobs, to take away the patronage components that had a corrupting influence on the system. By and large it succeeded in that goal, to its great credit. It's a very different set of rules that we have with regard to the private sector.

So, again, I think that that is, to a certain degree, a false analogy, and I hope that the information I provided helps correct that in the eyes of those who are listening.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), a colleague of mine.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so we can bring up the Paycheck Fairness Act. I urge a ``no'' vote on this restrictive rule and the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Source