Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622 :

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Isnt this something that is just absorbed over time as more employers employees make money, they spend more and then youll have to rehire. Isnt this a red herring argument . And my second question is, why dont we just increase minimum wage or do some index so were constantly increasing wages and we dont have to have this discussion. With the minimum wage l on the increase economists by and y large agree that there is a negative impact overall on the economy, particularly on like the 18 to 25 demographic where you see recordem levels of n unemployment. Thats because they do not get the entry level jobs. Employers are not hiring those low level jobs. I wo i would disagree that its a red herring. Theres a real impact on the businesses in this country. I with due respect, i completely disagree with her ngs of readings of the economic studies which have come to conclude theres no significant job loss associated with raising minimum wages. And while it is true that youth hat yout unemployment or youths employment is at a record low thats a trend thats been in place for 10 or 15 years. There are lots of reasons for itfor th and most over the last seven or yea eight yearrss has to do with adults moving into jobs that young people had because they s coul were the only jobs that adults could get. I dont think that has anything econom toic do with the minimum wage. Ge has theres considerable Economic Analysis that disputes the notion that raising the minimum yo wage has an Economic Impact on people including young people. This kind of argument is raised not only with respect to raising the minimum wage but with respect to every single proposalnd the ever made to improve wages and working conditions and the right to safe and Healthy Workplaces and right to be free from discrimination. These wereing arguments made in s the opposition tsto ending race discrimination on the job. This is just the standard line i know of w arguments. I run a Small Business. I ikn know what its like to meet workplace standards. Ke sur i know whats its like to raiseyear a budget to make sure my employees all get salary are a increases every year and those who are not exempt are able to have some sort of flexibility without incurring massive overtime costs. Do no thats not always easy. But we dont expect employees to put in free labor for their employers. I dont think most Small Businesses expect that. So i think that its very important to make clear thats these costs over time can get small absorbed. I waser f listening to an interview the other day with a Small Business owner from North Carolina who said im going to have to do some juggling here ecogni and i dontze really look forward to doing that, but i recognize ho in the long run this is good for my employees and my business. Proj ec for those unfamiliar with the National Employment law project, tell us about it. Weve been around 45 years. We focus on low wage workers unemployed, getting access to jobs for people with criminal records. Our work iss both in the states and national level. We are involved in most of these minimum wage campaigns going on oing around the cannotountry. And i much theed to note that there is federal legislation that, in fact, if it were to m wage pass, would index the minimum wage to rise each year and a number of states passed minimum wage laws that also index the nal minimum wages to raise each s year. Thats a completely rational approach and would avoid the need to have these fights every 5, 10 or 15 years. T a dece how do we adjust wage levels so ork. People who work for a living can tom is make a decent living. Nts. Tom has been waiting on the line for independents. Youre on the washington journal. Caller good morning. Thank you. I want to go back to the minimum wage. Youve been talking about it for a little bit. Ach year i made some notes about this. Someone said the increase would heard be indexed. And i heard words like obscene to describe the current situation. If im correct, its the increase would be from approximately 24,000 to 50,000 a year where this would kick in. I could get behind that if it was an increase to say 30,000 and we do something about an increase on minimum wage and index it as well. For people above 30,000 or whatever, how about putting a an maximum number of hours that employees can work so that they d up w dont end up working 60 and 70 seems hours a week that people are claiming they are working. It just seems like the poor the low est lowest wage earners in our country are always getting the shaft to make it better for the ke middle class. Everyone wants to get the middleho class on board but they keep forgetting about the poor. Eps, les and thats my comment. Hat are there inbetween steps, t less drastic steps than the doubling were talking about t that nfib could get behind . That i think there are a lot of an things that can be done to look at this 1938 law. This fair labor standards act was passed when most workers at th were in a factory and punched in and punched out at the end of the day. Very different workplace than weurly have nowadays. If you are a nonexempt exibilit employee, an hourly employee c you dont have a lot of flexibility. Your employer cant offer you comp time. Its difficult in companies that dont have big payroll departments, hr departments to do any kind of bonus structure lity f because itsor difficult to figurers. Out for hourly workers. Theres not the flexibility for c the hourly workers. Maybe we can change the nonexempt status to make it more flexible in a modern workplace. That would be a very good thing to do. Tell us your thoughts about those changes. I want to comment on tom because toms remarks. I think that i think that we have to both build the economy from the bottom up, the working , the poor that tom talked about, and me from the middle out. The overtime rule changes are becau really squarely addressed at theovertime middle class because those are the kind of jobs that are exemptnimum wa from the overtime pay more requirement. B theg minimum wage is addressed much more at people who are in the working poor categories. I think we need both. We have a sort of sorry record of doing much with either over the last 30plus years. Congress has only passed minimumt ha wage increased three times, which is part of why the minimum wage has lost so much value over the last three decades. We need to do both. I want to comment on beths beth remarks about flexibility. Xibility i run a Small Business. I have some employees who are entitled to overtime. As a Small Business person who it knows my i employees, its a little easier to say yes you can take two hours off today to go to your kids school play and then tomorrow come in an hour early and work an hour late or something. That is perfectly legal. And i think there are a lot of ide ways that employers can provide with someou flexibility to their y employees without violating overtime rules or without havingof the to f fundamentally change the bor nature of the fair labor standards act. The aed bying folk sus to make sure people get a fair days wages for a fair days work. If anything, the challenges of this economy make it all the more important we have some bright line tests like minimum wage that keep up with the cost of living, wage growth reasonable overtime exemptions and rules and that we educate employers about how they can pen. Provide flexibility within the context of the law. Its not rocket science. It can happen. Id like to respond to that. Running the flexibility chris runs anloyee th office. Shes no t running a restaurant or retail store where she needs the employee there an hour u can early. To say, i can be flexible. And work two hours later today or s diff talk two hourser tomorrow its r very different than a business yees running a restaurant or retail store who needs those employees there at set hours. The flexibility is justice not there just not there. Ay this is the nonexempt, the hourly workers looking at ways t in to help them to have more flexibility in a more modern workplace. Well try to get to as many of your calls as we can. The line for democrats. Arvena, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Id like to know if this is something that congress has to pass or please advise me on that. Is thisoes . Something thats the National Labor board does . You said something earlier about there being a 30day comment period. And i certainly have my ideas on this about fairness for one thing. For i cannot believe ive had a son who is working for a Japanese Company right now, and he is hour designated as salary and the guy is working 60 65 hours a week, gets no overtime. Hes making less money than what way t his dad was making in 1979. I cannot believe the way that employers are doing their employees. So please tell me about how this will come about. That thanks. Let me just say right off the bat that if you go to the Labor Departments website, www. Dol. Gov and look at overtime proposals, youll see how you t does can sometimes comments. The Labor Department didnt just want to hear from the National Federation of independent business and the National Employment law project. They want to hear from people like you that have valuable information, useful examples. Your story about your son is a nd of very compelling story the kind of stories we hear in our work you to every single day. Ides encourage you to go to the orks Labor Department website and submit some comments. The way this works is the Labor Department has the authority to change to update the rules governing the exception. Le, it has issued this proposed rule, which is an exercise of ider t its authority. It will consider the comments issue that come in and then it will issue a final rule. The final rule may be the same threshold. It may be different. Ac that Authority Comes from theabor d congressionally passed fair fore. Labor standards. Its done this seven times before. Theres no questionth it has the authority to do it. There then some are mechanisms the l that would allow congress to review what the Labor Department has done, but we hope it wont get to wont it wil get to l that. We hope that the Labor Department will issue the final rule, it will take effect and the Department Im sure, will pe work witnnh employers to help achieve compliance. Calling in from pennsylvania, line four independents. Goodnt. Morning how are you ladies doing . Same re i have a comment. I dont know if its kind of in the same i realm but basically peopl this is whate i want to say. With the work i do im not going to say what i do but i interact with people that i work with in Certain Department stores. And the jobs make is sure they dont get overcharged. And a friend of mine who is a district manager now he makes sure that they cant get overtime and they have to manipulate the numbers to make s goin sure they didnt get overtime. Is that illegal . I know its not illegal. Whats going on out here. Host all of these socalled companies cant afford this but they make sure they work overtime so they can get their bonuses every year. I dont think thats right. I really dont. S ovovertime is not required. An employer is not required to offer its employees overtime. Theyre required to offer paid udging nonexempt workers for all time worked. So if an employer is fudging numbers or having people falsify time sheets that violates the fair labors standards act. But theres in requirement that for an employee offer over time or an hourly worker is entitled foro you over time. An employer must pay an employee for all hours works. But it can do things to mange sure its employees are not working overtime. Did you want to add anything . I agree with beth. Allowed shes absolutely right about that. Employees are not allowed to refuse to work overtime in most think places either andth thats toda certainly true for white collar employees. Theres another problem that we h havent talked about today. There are a lot of people who dont have enough hours of work. The problem of what we call business involuntary parttime employment is fairly significant. And ive heard many people say real in the Business Community that once response they may have to the overtime changes would be to been reallocate hours and shift some at is of theno overtime hours that excite collar exempt employees ld be had been putting in to some other workers. Be work thats not a bad thing. Ers who in many workplaces the could be a winwin. You have some workers who would not be working overtime and some who would want the additional hours. Its not necessarily the case that the only way to respond to the charges will be to begin paying overtime. Retai it may actually require some reallocation of hours. And the National Retail Federation Said its going to is goi create ng100,000 parttime jobs. U as not necessarily the case car that its going to become a huge cost factor. T betty good morning. Youre on washington journal. Caller good morning. Im calling in because i recently left baltimore, maryland retired, 67 years old left my job retired on december 5th of 14. So i havent been long gone from the work place. K there are consequences that occur and i just wanted to let folks know who havent been in the workplace for a long time who maybe doesnt understand whats going on. What i saw in my job one manages were not to be paid overtime i saw hourly workers who were getting back we would have positions where wed have only one person doing that job. But it had to be done. And every day, in order for them to keep it up, maybe it would belaried a couple of hours a day of overtime. Those people became salaried and became managers. Who werent really managers in the department. Sim but it was simply a way of cutting the wages. Regular hourly workers, managers were made in some f their departments. And what happened was the regular workers stopped getting ou overtime. When youre making overtime and youre getting bonuses you dont mind so much when youre getting a 25 . 25 a year raise when youre just sitting muc there. But when you get bonuses, you get good work bonuses and things like that. And it doesnt matter so much. But all of that went away. There are people that are paid e not just your managers to make sure that raises are kept low. Or these people work for consulting firms all over the world. They consult for big business as well as other companies. You can see where they are. Betty our last caller. I want to give you ka chance to ses an comment on her story. Ck i think betty raises an interesting point there about consultants and it goes back to the point about big businesses, the costco the walmarts and the 2200 targets have a very different they Business Structure than a the 22 million Small Businesses in this country. Theyre not hiring soilts to come in and look at salary structure. All the Small Businesses know isople e this is my bottom line. This is what i need to keep my doors open. S hechristine . I think betty raises articu interesting points. One of them in particular is the way that the interplay between an the rules governing hourly ch employees and salaries employees and how changes in one arena can affect workers in the other balan arena. And i think the Labor Department has done a careful balancing act here to try to make sure this works for all workers. If you want to read moreg. From the National Employment law projects, Christine Owens is the directo executive director. Elizabeth is with the National Federation of independent business, Small Business leader Senior Executive council. Thank you both for joining us this morning. Thank you very much. On the next walking journal, well talk to texas congressman about the confederate display of the flag and along with other items in the news. Onethird of americans are working two or three jobs in whats been called the big economy. Mark warner joins us to dus cuss this. Later a conversation within some of the challenges facing self employed workers who hold multiple jobs. Washington journal is live each morning at 7 00 eastern on cspan. You can join the conversation by phone and on facebook and twitter. Homeland security secretary jay johnson talks about government Computer Network security. You can see his comments live at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 2. This summer book tv will cover book festivals from across the country. Next weekend were live at the harlem book fair, the nations flagship literary event with author interviews and panel discussions. September, were lye from the Nations Capital for the National Book festival. Next a portion of this years Techcrunch Disrupt conference from new york city. First a conversation with the heads of on demand Delivery Service companies and Online Service providers of electronics, cosmetics. Other specters inud collude bill de blasio. This is about two hours. In. Yeah. Its me. Okay. People are still filing back in but weve got an amazing speaker coming up next. So please hurry back if youre not already in your seats. Here in new york were pretty obsessed with the on demand economy because were really lazy or working harder than the folks in San Francisco and we dont have time to get things. Ive gotten used to being able to get eggs, coffee milk, what chipotle onet demand. Im started to take it to a new level and ask for impossible stuff, a sunny day better attitude. I think our next g

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