New Labor Dept Rules Would Hit Working Women Hardest

The Department of Labor's proposed new rules on overtime pay would significantly hurt working women's ability to negotiate workplace flexibility tailored to their personal and family needs, argues economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.

• The new rules would apply to several million new female workers who are currently classified as executive or professional, many of whom now enjoy highly valued workplace flexibility.
• The new rules would prevent women from negotiating "comp" arrangements in which they take additional time off in exchange for extra time worked.
• The new rules would have a chilling impact on women's opportunity to telecommute and/or work from home, since employers will be required to keep careful track of worker's hours to avoid being sued for overtime violations. Working mothers, in particular, find these flexible work arrangements highly beneficial when a child becomes sick or a babysitter cancels.

A better solution for working women, argues the author, would be to leave undisturbed the workplace flexibility that many millions of women have already successfully negotiated.

As for "comp" arrangements, she argues another proposal — the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last year — would be a more woman-friendly solution:  offering "workers who worked more than 40 hours a week a choice of 1.5 hours of comp time per overtime hour worked, rather than overtime pay." 

Source: Obama's War on Working Women, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Manhattan Institute.