April 2003

'Comp-time’ bill headed for full house committee

If the Family Time Flexibility Act becomes law, you and your employees may have more flexibility in dealing with overtime-pay issues.

The bill, which has been sent to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, would allow employers to give hourly-paid employees the flexibility to receive compensatory time (comp time) for personal or family needs.

Currently, federal law does not permit non-exempt employees (those who are subject to be paid overtime) to be given comp time in lieu of paid overtime. The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates nearly 71.4 million private sector, non-exempt workers are entitled to overtime at time-and-a half after completing a 40-hour workweek, and many of those workers have the potential of benefiting from this bill, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, a national organization of professional human resources professionals.

The bill allows non-exempt employees who voluntarily choose paid compensatory time off to accrue up to 160 hours of comp time per year. They would be compensated in cash for any unused hours at the end of the year. The employer and employee would have to sign a voluntary agreement before the employee could choose comp time as a preference.

Without a written agreement, the employee would continue to receive overtime payments. The legislation prohibits employers from forcing employees to take comp time instead of overtime.

Hourly-paid employees in the private sector are protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a federal law that established standards for minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor. The law also established exemption from overtime provisions for employees in certain professional, executive and administrative jobs.

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