patrickaa317 wrote:2. Example: Today, I work 45 hours in a week. My boss tells me I can take off five hours next week since I had five extra last week. My understanding from the video is that the guy who worked an extra 5 hours, now has $75 worth of comp time he can use. At $10/hour, he has 7.5 hours worth of time. To me that seems to be a good option to the worker. The video did do a pretty poor job of explaining this and focused more on trying to demonize the bill rather than outline actual situations so perhaps you and I are just coming away with two different understandings of what the video maker was trying to say.
If you work 45 hours one week, and 35 the next week, it doesn't balance out.
8-8-8!!!, that's the cry of our forbearers. It's labor history.
You're losing your half-pay for those 5 hours OT, which is pretty much your boss stealing money from you. People died over this.
patrickaa317 wrote:3. How are they going to use comp time as an extra point of leverage? "you can't have the day off because you have comp time"? or "I would give you the day off but because you have comp time, i am going to make you work instead". Not seeing how someone having built up hours can be used as leverage for not giving them time off.
patrickaa317 wrote:4. Give an example of how it works today and how it might work if this bill passed, again not sure how this would increase leverage for employers to not give time off.
It's leverage that a boss can use between employees.
"Rita gets more hours because she takes comp time. Take comp time and then you can get your 40."
or
"We only hire Comp time here. You work 60 hours a week."
They wouldn't even need to come out and say it, they'd just schedule the workers that way. A bad business can do well for itself by forcing employees to give it small loans like this.
Overall, it's all Fffffff-ed. It's labor history. If you ask for your pay-out, instead of vacation, your company gets a 30 day window to pay you. They pay no interest on your money. There's nothing that says they
have to give you any vacation time that you request, and there's no protection for employees who are forced to take comp time or are fired. So if your son winds up in the hospital or something, your boss doesn't have to give you your comp time off and he or she gets 30 days before he or she has to give you your money. Who can wait 30 days in an emergency?
Worst case scenario:
You work 60 hours a week, for 40 hours a week's pay. You ask for your Comp Time off, you're denied. 180 hours @ work later, you're given 8 hours of Comp Time off, but that means that you've lost your half time pay for 8 hours that you worked. So you ask for your money, and you don't get your pay for 30 days.
Finally, at the end of the year, you get whatever is on your payout, with no interest, and you've lost your half-time pay as well.
Overworked and underpaid. As 1/2 of Americans are low income or poor, it's a safe bet that they will suffer very badly.
patrickaa317 wrote:Right. Did you see the outrage in the video when they suggested the company you work for could possibly do the same thing? Juan even considers this house bill scandalous. Imagine what he is currently thinking about Benghazi, IRS profiling, and the DOJ wiretappings going on.
A job's a job.
The government protects me from rapists and stuff.
And it's not the same thing. Not nearly.
Since I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but rather a historian, I think I'll complain about the things that are a greater worry.