H.R. 1180 would "allow" employees to bank up to 160 hours of overtime pay (4 weeks at time-and-a-half pay), to be used when taking time off at an approved and non-work-disruptive period as allowed by the employer.
How this is supposed to give working families flexibility is not explained. Although such banking of overtime is supposedly subject to prior approval by both employee and employer, in practice the employee would have no power to refuse to be paid at some future date instead of the next payday.
Such banked hours would be subject to possible employer bankruptcies and fraud, and relies on the fairness and honesty of the employer. Also, no interest would be paid to the employee for funds banked by the employer.
"Under current law, an employer that honestly wants to give an employee time off to compensate for the sacrifice of working extra hours can do so. No legislation is required. The employer simply pays for the overtime when it’s worked and then gives the employee unpaid time off when the employee requests it. The employee gets the money first and the leave later.
"The comp time bill turns this around — to the detriment of the workers. It gives employers the right to hang onto their employees’ overtime pay for months and months without paying interest on it or necessarily ever giving compensatory time off. Calling this a scam is being gentle."
"...Imagine a Wal-Mart sized employer with a comp time bank holding 100 hours of overtime pay for each of 100,000 employees paid $10 an hour. That’s a $100 million loan, interest-free from the employees to Wal-Mart."
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/329087-calling-the-comp-time-bill-a-scam-is-being-gentle
How this is supposed to give working families flexibility is not explained. Although such banking of overtime is supposedly subject to prior approval by both employee and employer, in practice the employee would have no power to refuse to be paid at some future date instead of the next payday.
Such banked hours would be subject to possible employer bankruptcies and fraud, and relies on the fairness and honesty of the employer. Also, no interest would be paid to the employee for funds banked by the employer.
"Under current law, an employer that honestly wants to give an employee time off to compensate for the sacrifice of working extra hours can do so. No legislation is required. The employer simply pays for the overtime when it’s worked and then gives the employee unpaid time off when the employee requests it. The employee gets the money first and the leave later.
"The comp time bill turns this around — to the detriment of the workers. It gives employers the right to hang onto their employees’ overtime pay for months and months without paying interest on it or necessarily ever giving compensatory time off. Calling this a scam is being gentle."
"...Imagine a Wal-Mart sized employer with a comp time bank holding 100 hours of overtime pay for each of 100,000 employees paid $10 an hour. That’s a $100 million loan, interest-free from the employees to Wal-Mart."
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/329087-calling-the-comp-time-bill-a-scam-is-being-gentle
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