Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Further inquiry, Mr. President: If, however, cloture is invoked on the motion to recommit, is it not true that this Senator's amendment then would fall and not be allowed, under the rules of cloture, or am I wrong? Maybe my amendment would be allowed.

Mr. HARKIN. I understand that. But then this Senator would be allowed to offer my overtime amendment on the new bill that will be before us at that point?

Mr. HARKIN. Is it further correct to say that if cloture is invoked, this amendment would fall, that it would not be allowed under the rules of the Senate?

Mr. HARKIN. Further inquiry, Mr. President: Yesterday this Senator offered an amendment dealing with overtime. Is that amendment still pending?

Mr. HARKIN. So, therefore, no amendments, then, are allowed, under the rules of the Senate, to be made to the motion to recommit?

Mr. HARKIN. Do I understand that both a first-degree and second- degree amendment have been made already?

Mr. HARKIN. Since there is a motion to recommit that is pending, is it not in order for an amendment to be made to that motion?

Mr. HARKIN. I understand also that a cloture motion has been filed on the motion to recommit.

Mr. HARKIN. The parliamentary inquiry I would like to make is where are we right now on the bill? Are we on the motion to recommit, at this point?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HARKIN. Then under the rules of Senate, if cloture is invoked, this Senator's amendment would not be allowed, I understand, because it will be nongermane.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent Emily Deimel of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from California. This really does point out what is very important. Again, I ask the Senator if I am correct in my interpretation, because I want to make sure I am clear on this, that right now, for these certain classes that are not being reclassified as it exists, if you work over 40 hours a week, you have a contract negotiation that is not even negotiable because you are covered by overtime law.

Mr. HARKIN. See, that is it.

Mr. HARKIN. Am I right on that?

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator has done something of great value to all of us by bringing this out. A lot of the time we hear these things, but this puts it in focus. The Secretary says: Hourly workers not affected by part 541 under either the current or proposed rules. But is there anything in the proposed rules that would prevent an employer from saying: OK, you were an hourly worker. We have now reclassified you. You are now a professional. Don't you feel good? You are now a professional. And guess what. You don't get overtime. There is nothing to stop them from doing that.

Mr. HARKIN. Will my colleague yield?

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from California that this, right here, is very instructive: We also believe it is unrealistic for unions to claim that overtime pay granted under a current collective bargaining agreement is likely to be revoked during a new negotiation. I ask the Senator, am I correct that what she is actually saying is, however, now overtime pay will be a negotiable item?

Mr. HARKIN. See, now it is nonnegotiable.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator, basically, is thanking the wrong person. The Senator should look in the mirror if she wants to thank someone. The people of California are privileged to have a fighter like Barbara Boxer representing them in the Senate. I mean that. Not only is the Senator a personal friend of mine but someone I admire so much because she never backs down. When Senator Boxer speaks, you hear clearly the voices of the common man and woman, the person who doesn't have a voice here, individuals who will never set foot on the Senate floor, who never will be privileged to speak in this hallowed Chamber. The Senator from California speaks for them.

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield. Again, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for not forgetting his populace roots of North Dakota. When the Senator speaks on the floor, as he just has, he speaks with clarity, common sense, and the wisdom of the common man and woman. That is why I have always admired the Senator from North Dakota. What he has just said strikes right at the heart of what the common man and woman in this country feel--that their rights to at least overtime pay, if they are working over 40 hours, are being taken away without their having anything to say about it. As the Senator pointed out very clearly, we are not being allowed our right to represent the common man and woman--his constituents in North Dakota, my constituents in Iowa, or anywhere else in this country--in getting a vote on the Senate floor as to whether we will permit the administration to take away those overtime rights. I say to the Senator this is something that should not be allowed to happen on the Senate floor. I thank the Senator for his stalwart support for our working men and women and for insisting we have a vote on this Senate floor. The Senator is absolutely right that we are having all kinds of games being played, all kinds of little parliamentary tricks, so we will not vote on this. There is one other thing I want to ask the Senator from North Dakota, who also has a keen insight and judgment on issues dealing with fairness and taxation and jobs going overseas. This morning, the senior Senator from Iowa, who is the chairman of the Finance Committee, went on to talk about how if we do not pass this bill there are going to be tariffs because the WTO said we are in violation, and so therefore we have to change the law or we are going to have to start paying tariffs. I am reading from what basically he said this morning: The sanctions began on March 1, 5 percent. The Senator from Iowa said: It is like a 5-percent sales tax on everything we are going to sell overseas or stuff we are going to sell overseas. He said by March it would be 5 percent; 6 percent in April; 7 percent in May; 8 percent in June; 9 percent in July; 10 percent in August; 11 percent in September; 12 percent by November. So will the Senator from North Dakota help me clear up my thinking on this? I hear now that the Republicans, since they do not want to vote on the overtime amendment, may actually pull the bill, kill this bill, which means then we will have to pay tariffs to Europe, we will have to pay a penalty, that may amount, according to the Senator from Iowa, up to $4 billion a year. Am I correct, I ask the Senator from North Dakota, that they would rather pay tariffs to Europe than overtime to our workers? That is what they are saying. If they pull this bill, we will have to pay these tariffs; we will be paying money to Europe but we will not be paying overtime. Does the Senator from North Dakota see it that way, that somehow because they do not want to vote on overtime they will pay tariffs to Europe but not overtime to our people? I ask the Senator from North Dakota what kind of fairness is there to our working people in that?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from North Dakota for the eloquence of his statement and I thank Senator Dorgan for his unwavering support through all the years I have been privileged to know him and be his friend, his unwavering support for the common man and woman in this country, for working families, for our farmers and ranchers out in the West and the Midwest. Senator Dorgan is always eloquent in his remarks. As you listen to Senator Dorgan speak, you can hear the voice of that average man and that average woman out there who are not big time lobbyists down here on K Street; as Senator Dorgan said, they don't have the shiny shoes and suspenders and whatever else. They are out there working every day, feeding and clothing their families. They have a decent life. They give their kids a good education. They do what they can to make sure their kids have a little bit better life than they have had. It is called the American dream. And no one has been a stronger supporter of ensuring that American dream for our working families than the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan. I thank him for all that support through all the years and for carrying on the fight for overtime and making sure our workers are paid the overtime that is due them when they work over 40 hours a week. Earlier today I pointed out the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Thomas from California, according to the Congressional Quarterly, told a business group yesterday he thinks this foreign tax bill we have before us is doomed. Those were his words. He pointed the finger at the business community, according to today's issue of the national journal Congress Daily. Mr. Thomas, in other words, was blaming K Street lobbyists for this bill's likely demise in the House. It seems to me what we have is a bill that is already being slow- walked by some of the majority leadership in the Senate because the leaders on the other side don't want to vote on overtime. I hope we don't hear anything from the other side saying somehow we are to blame for slowing down this bill. We had a unanimous consent agreement. My amendment was in line to be offered. I offered the amendment in good faith. I was even asking if we could have a time agreement. Imagine that. I offered the amendment. I offered a time agreement. I couldn't even be given a time agreement by the other side. Then the Republican side goes ahead and files this motion to recommit with an amendment on it and then they filed cloture and all this gobbledygook parliamentary stuff. What it means is we will not vote today. We will have a cloture vote tomorrow. They will not get cloture. Then I hear rumors the leadership on the Republican side will then pull the bill and somehow blame Democrats, blame Democrats, us, our side, for not getting this bill through. I will tell you, talk about chutzpah. That is like the person who went before the judge for having killed his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan. The other side is responsible for killing this bill. Have no doubt. Make no bones about it. They are responsible because they don't want to vote on overtime. They don't want to vote. They get kind of wobbly in the knees. Their ankles get weak. They break out in a cold sweat when they think they might have to vote on whether to uphold the administration's proposed rules that will take overtime pay away from hard-working American families. They have to vote against the administration. Sometimes we are called upon to represent our constituents. As hard as that may be to believe by some, sometimes we are called upon to represent our constituents, not the administration but to represent our people. The administration may want to take away overtime pay. That may be their position. But at least we ought to have the right to vote on whether we ought to uphold that decision. I know it may come as a shock to many Americans, but sometimes we are not allowed to vote in the Senate. We are not allowed to vote on an amendment. I have my amendment pending. They won't let us vote on it because they filed this cloture motion, this parliamentary device. As the Senator from North Dakota said, I don't care how many times we have to be here. We will be back, we will be back, we will be back to vote on whether we are going to take overtime pay away from American workers. If we don't vote on it tomorrow, we will vote on it some other time, or my friends on the other side will continue to pull bill after bill after bill because they don't want to vote on it. Maybe they think they can just go ahead and issue the final regulations. Then it will be sort of a fait accompli. Evidently, we will not do anything. I am sorry, Mr. President. If that is the case, we will be back with an amendment to say they will not go into effect until we have had open and public hearings on these regulations. We will have a vote on it. My friends on the other side of the aisle are just putting off the inevitable. Maybe for one reason or another they don't want this bill to go through anyway. That is kind of an odd position, as I said to the Senator from North Dakota. As the chairman of the committee said this morning, under the international agreements we have on trade, the World Trade Organization rules that our pretax policy is an illegal export subsidy, and consequently the WTO has authorized Europe to go up to $4 billion a year against certain U.S. exports. The sanctions began on March 1. They started at 5 percent. Then they go up 1 percent a month, all the way up to 17 percent over the course of a year. I don't want to pay those tariffs. I don't want to pay those penalties. I would like to get this bill through. The other side, though, simply because they do not want a vote on overtime, is saying they are going to go ahead and pay these tariffs. It seems to me what they are saying is they would rather pay tariffs to Europe than overtime to workers. That is exactly what is happening. Pay the tariffs to Europe but don't pay overtime to our workers. A lot has been said about the American worker and working families. I wonder how many people know that right now American workers work longer per year than anyone else in the industrialized world. This chart shows it. For the years 2002 and 2003, American workers are working in the United States almost 2,000 hours a year--more than Australia, Japan, Spain, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, or Germany. Not only are we working longer hours per year, we are now being told if we work overtime we will not get paid for it. Do you know what is going to happen if these rules go into effect? This bar will go way up because then employers will work their employees longer because they don't have to pay them overtime. We already work longer. What is the history of this bill? This kind of gets to the crux again of what is happening here with the proposed rules on overtime. I said last summer when I offered this amendment and it was adopted by the Senate, the biggest impact of taking away overtime pay protection would be on women. People wondered why I said that. Why would women be impacted most? For two reasons: One, because the annual hours worked by middle-income wives with children in 1979 were 895 hours a year. By the year 2000, that had gone to 1,308 hours a year. Women with children are working more--not quite double but almost--than what they were a mere 21 years ago. Most of these jobs are in certain types of clerical positions in which women have been engaged. Some of them are in positions which are going to be reclassified under the proposed rules as ``professions.'' These are the kinds of jobs that are mostly held by working women, and mostly by working mothers. The biggest impact will be on working women. The initial wave of impact will be on working women. I have a statement from Susan Moore of Chicago. She said: I am currently entitled to time and a half under Federal law. I know for a fact that is the reason I am not required to work long hours like the project managers who are not entitled to overtime pay. My supervisor has to think hard about whether to assign overtime to me because he has to pay for my time. That means more time for my family and that time is important to me. If the law changes and I lose my right to overtime pay, I will be faced with the impossible choice of losing time with my family or losing my job. This is a statement from Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA. She said: I began my career as a supply clerk earning $3.10 an hour in 1976. I entered an upward mobility program and received training to become an engineer technician with a career ladder that gave me a yearly boost in income. It seemed, though, that even with a decent raise every year, I really relied on overtime income to help make ends meet. I am a working single parent. There are many more single parents today with the same problem. How does one pay for the car that broke down or the braces for the children's teeth? Overtime income has been the lifesaver to many of us. When I as a working mother leave my 8-hour day job and go home, my second shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes to wash, laundry and all the other housework that must be done which adds another 3 to 4 hours to your workday. When one has to put in extra hours at work, it takes away from the time needed to take care of our personal needs. Listen to Sheila Perez who is from Bremerton, WA, a single parent. She says: It only seems fair that one should be compensated for that extra effort of working overtime. Overtime is a sacrifice of one's time, energy, physical and mental well-being. Compensation should be commensurate in the form of premium pay as it is a premium of one's personal time, energy and expertise that is being used. If I might interpret what Sheila Perez is saying, she says: I am a single parent. I work hard. I rely on overtime. When I get home from work, I have another job taking care of my kids, doing all of my laundry. My time with my kids at home on the weekends is my premium time. If I am being asked to give up my premium time to work on the job, I ought to be given premium pay. I can't say it any better than Sheila Perez. Again, it is another example why this is going to hit working women the hardest. I am just notified that CongressDaily, as of 3 p.m., which was only about 40 minutes ago, had this statement. CongressDaily comes out during the day, and at 3 p.m. said: A senior GOP leadership aide reiterated today that GOP leaders will refuse a floor vote on the amendment from Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to strike a labor provision involving overtime pay for white-collar workers. I don't know if that is true. It is being reported in CongressDaily at 3 p.m. that they will refuse a floor vote on my amendment; refuse it. Why is it they get so wobbly in the knees, with weak ankles, and break out in a cold sweat? Maybe they are just afraid of George Bush. Maybe they are afraid of the administration downtown. I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, don't be afraid of them; be afraid of the people you represent. They are the ones who pay your salary. They are the ones who vote to send you here. They are the ones whose overtime is being assaulted, not the President and the people down at the White House. Last summer in August, Peter Hart Research Associates, a well-known national pollster, did a poll. This was the question: There is now a proposal to change the Federal law that determines which employees have the legal right to overtime pay. This proposal would eliminate the right to overtime pay for 7 million employees who now have that right. Do you favor or oppose this proposal? In favor, 14 percent; oppose,74 percent. That is not even close. I can understand why the other side would not want to vote on this. Maybe they feel dutybound, politically bound, party bound to support their President. Therefore, they would not want to vote because they know 74 percent of the American people are opposed to this proposal to take away their overtime pay, the right to overtime pay. This is an issue that strikes, as so many before me have said, at the heart of fairness and equity to American workers. What could be more fair than if you have to work over 40 hours a week, you have to be paid time-and-a-half overtime? That is the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938. What is a little known fact is that a debate raged in this country for a long period of time--I would say almost 40 years from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, at least until 1938--on restricting the number of hours that an American worker had to work without getting some kind of extra pay. Remember, in those days we even had child labor; we got rid of that. The American workers were working 50, 60, 70 hours a week with no protection by labor unions, no rights whatever. Finally, slowly but surely, organized labor grew, more and more rights were attained by our workers, and then the debate ensued about how many hours a week should a worker work without being paid overtime. A little known fact: In 1937, this Senate, in this very Chamber in which we find ourselves today, right here in this Chamber, the Senate, in 1937, voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. Imagine, right here in the Senate where we are standing, the Senate, in 1937, voted for a 30- hour workweek. The debate ensued, and finally, by 1938 they compromised. The compromise was a 40-hour week with time-and-a-half overtime. Think about that: the Senate, in 1937, actually voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. Today, we cannot even get a vote in the Senate on whether we will pay people overtime to work over 40 hours a week. We cannot get a vote on it. That says something about the difference of the Senate in 1937 from the Senate in 2004. I wonder how many votes the Senate would get today if someone offered a vote to establish a 30-hour workweek. Do you think it would get 10 votes? In 1937 they got a majority of the votes, right here in the Senate. Yet now they are working longer and longer hours every year. More and more people are being made to work over 40 hours a week and not being paid for it. The reason I hear so much is we need to reclassify workers. The reclassification they are talking about basically would hit women the hardest, would reclassify them as being professional and therefore exempt from overtime. Again, they have done this without having one public hearing. I think they thought they could get by with it; just issue these rules and that would be the end of it. The American people have spoken loudly and strongly, saying they are not going to sit down and let their rights to overtime pay be taken away. Congress Daily, today at 3 p.m. says, quoting a senior GOP leadership aide, GOP leaders will refuse a floor vote on my amendment. As I said a week or so ago--and I see my colleague from California-- and I am not in the habit of quoting the present Governor of California, the movie actor, but I will quote him in saying ``I'll be back.'' We'll be back. This is not going to go away. If the other side thinks by doing these parliamentary tricks that somehow we will give up, they are wrong.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the Senator has put his finger on it. This proposal by the administration to take away the rights of up to 8 million Americans on overtime is what I call a job-killing proposal. The Senator is absolutely right. It is common sense. Look, if you have people working and you can work them over 40 hours and not pay them time and a half, but regular pay, why would you hire anybody else? You would just work them longer. In fact, I say to the Senator--and he may well be aware of this--when they put out the proposed rules, they put out certain examples on how employers could get around paying overtime. One of the proposals--I will read it into the Record later; I have done it previously--was to say, look, what you do is simply reclassify your workers; you then pay them a little bit less, but work them longer so your out-of-pocket expenses are the same, but you work them over 40 hours a week. What a deal. This is like the IRS telling people how to cheat on their taxes and giving them information on how to get around the IRS Code. At a time when we need jobs in this country, this is another disincentive to creating jobs. Not only do they want to outsource jobs to other countries, I say to my friend; they now want to tell the American worker to work longer every week and don't expect to get paid any more for it.

Mr. HARKIN. We will not give up because we are fighting for the rights of American workers to have justice and fairness in their working conditions. As Sheila Perez said, from Bremerton, WA, if she is forced to give up her premium time, her time with her family, she ought to get premium pay. We will continue to fight for this.

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield.