So, what if I told you that you had two options when it came to working more than your typical 40 hour work week? Let me present them to you:

Option 1: You work more than 40 hours in a week. Your employer pays you overtime, which is time and a half for every hour over that you will receive on your next paycheck.

Option 2: You work more than 40 hours in a week. Every hour that you go over is then put into “comp time” or compensatory time, which you can use later on like paid vacation time.

Both sound pretty good, right? Does one sound better than the other? Would you prefer to work for overtime pay or would you prefer to have some time saved up for the summer where you can say, “See you later, job! I’m spending a month in Europe!”

A new bill entitled “The Working Families Flexibility Act” was passed in the House of Representatives, backed and pushed by Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala. The act, she said, is aimed towards creating more flexibility for working moms and dads who would prefer to have time off instead of overtime pay to spend more time with their families. “As a working mom, this bill is personal to me,” Roby said. “I understand the time demands on working families, including children’s activities, caring for aging parents or even a spouse’s military deployment. It only makes sense that our laws governing the workplace catch up to the realities of today’s families.”

Despite passing in the GOP-led House, the bill will most likely fail in the Democratic-led Senate and the Obama administration has threatened a veto should it reach their desk. Why would this seemingly positive bill face death in the Senate and a potential veto? Because it faces a whole host of problems when it comes to worker’s rights and putting the power of employer’s rights into an employer’s hands.

What the act doesn’t address, as it currently stands, is the fact that employers will be able to dictate when employees would be allowed to take their “comp time”. That means that if the time you request isn’t convenient for the employer (much like paid vacations), then they can deny your request. In addition, what happens when an employer files for bankruptcy or you go past the allotted 160 hours that you can stockpile under the bill? Well, I suppose in layman’s terms, you’re shit out of luck.

These reasons are most likely why unionists, the AFL-CIO, and many hourly/working class people oppose the bill. An employer could very well “request” that you use comp time instead of overtime and an employee who is working from paycheck to paycheck would be hard-pressed to turn that down for fear of retaliation. It’s happened to me personally, after saying something about working 7 days in a row, 12 hours each day, though conveniently split between two weeks to avoid overtime pay. After saying something to management, my schedule the next week was for a single four hour shift. Their explanation? “We didn’t want to overwork you, since you couldn’t seem to handle it.”

So, does the comp time benefit the employee or the employer more? Can this bill change to better keep the working force safe? Or is this simply another big business tactic meant to trample on the 40 hour work week? Or maybe this bill really is meant to try and help people balance their lives between family and work with an alternative pay system?

Who are we kidding? This is politics. Nobody actually cares about the regular people.

image via shutterstock