12-Hour Workday Turns Clock Back on Labor Movement

Gov. George Deukmejian’s Administration is about to deliver another blow to California workers by legalizing the 12-hour workday without overtime pay--breaking with an eight-hour day tradition that began, at least for women, 75 years ago.

The Deukmejian Administration’s latest plan to take away gains made by workers over the years, like anti-labor plans and actions of the Reagan Administration, helps explain why organized labor rarely supports Republican political candidates here or elsewhere around the nation.

Unions are officially bipartisan, not wedded to any political party. That credo was first established 103 years ago by Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor.

In practice, though, Gompers’ idea about political neutrality has little meaning. Unions almost always endorse Democrats, even relatively conservative ones who often mockingly challenge labor to endorse the Republican opposition.

Such challenges are seldom accepted since the Republicans are typically even more anti-labor than the most conservative Democrats.

Deukmejian serves as an especially good example of why labor usually sticks with the Democrats. Despite his dismal labor record, he is becoming a major figure in national Republican circles and he will be campaigning for George Bush in the presidential election.

Among other things, he is still fighting labor’s efforts to revive the poorly enforced but still much needed California Occupational Health and Safety Administration that he abolished last year. He wants to leave enforcement of worker health and safety laws to the federal government, which does even less than the state to protect workers on their jobs.

His Administration is also fighting to impose a sub-minimum wage on workers who rely in part on tips for their income. And the governor has made a mockery of the state’s farm labor law, which was designed to help farm workers and would be a model for the nation--if properly enforced.

Next on the Deukmejian Administration’s hit list is the eight-hour workday policy that has helped California lay legitimate claim to being one of the most progressive states in the country.

This latest plan of attack is largely symbolic because the actual impact of the plan to legalize a 12-hour workday without overtime may be relatively small.

Most employers, and almost all of those with union contracts, will continue to use eight hours as the basic workday for their employees.

But what a shame to attack such a fine symbol. And it will be more than symbolic to thousands of California workers who will lose that overtime pay they now earn.

California is one of only five states--the others are Alaska, Arkansas, New York and Nevada, along with the commonwealth of Puerto Rico--that require employers to pay most employees time and a half after eight hours of work in one day. The federal government and most other states mandate time-and-a-half pay rates only after 40 hours of work in a week. In other words, even if workers put in 12-hour days, they get no overtime unless they also work more than 40 hours that week.

Now the Deukmejian-appointed majority on the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission is ready to break its liberal tradition and legalize the 12-hour day without overtime for most California employers. Overtime pay would still be required after 40 hours of work in a week.

The five-member commission recently voted 3-2 to do away with the eight-hour day for some categories of employees, including office, professional, and hotel and restaurant workers. Additional hearings and more IWC votes would have to be taken to weaken the protection other workers now have.

But implementation of the Deukmejian-IWC majority plan to legalize the 12-hour day without overtime is apparently inevitable.

There will be a safeguard of sorts. Workers at each company where a 12-hour policy is proposed will get to vote on whether they want to switch to it.

But the point is that they will lose the automatic legal protection they have now. And large numbers of workers will feel obliged to accept 12-hour days if their employers pressure them. Since the plan is being advocated strongly by employers, those pressures surely will be applied.

California’s eight-hour day began for women workers in 1913 and later was extended to minors. Legislation bringing men under the state wage and hour law wasn’t passed until 1974, and strenuous employer opposition delayed enforcement of that extension until 1980.

There were exceptions to the eight-hour day for some groups of workers, such as those in agriculture. Another came in 1974 when the IWC approved the “4-by-10” work week, which permitted employers to keep workers on the job for 10 hours a day without overtime. But that was somewhat attractive to employees who wanted to work only four days a week.

A shorter work week is perhaps one of the oldest and best-known struggles of workers around the world. In the 1700s, workers in this country were calling for a 12-hour day--as Deukmejian is proposing.

By the late 1800s, the nationwide rallying cry of the fledgling labor movement led by Gompers was for the eight-hour day and that helped attract workers to the cause of unionism.

May Day is celebrated in many countries for many reasons, but in the United States it is honored because unions across the nation declared that after May 1, 1884, “eight hours shall constitute a day’s labor.”

Since then, the eight-hour day has become commonplace in most nations, though usually by practice, not by law.

Overtime pay is often seen primarily as a special benefit for workers, and it is almost always welcomed by them when it is voluntary, not ordered by management.

But its real purpose is to serve as a penalty on employers.

The idea is that government should discourage overtime, not by forbidding it, but by making employers pay the cost of the overtime penalty when they want workers to put in extra hours.

The eight-hour day makes as much good sense today as it did in Gompers’ day.

And there is a more humane way to cope with the argument that other states have a competitive advantage because they do not require overtime after eight hours: Deukmejian and his business allies must strive diligently to spread the eight-hour workday policy nationwide rather than eliminating it in California.

Labor Fills Political Role on Short Notice

The political impact of organized labor is being measured in part this week by the record number of union delegates and alternates to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

The estimated 1,000 unionists attending the session does indicate the important role unions play in the Democratic Party. But a more significant way of judging their role might be to look at the implication of a small incident that occurred in Los Angeles about two weeks ago.

Despite the millions of dollars presidential candidates spend to sell themselves to voters, they also sometimes urgently need other kinds of assistance from supporters in every part of the nation--and that’s where unions come in.

Union cadres are available in small towns and big cities on a moment’s notice to do everything from helping to turn out crowds for rallies to bringing members out to greet candidates enthusiastically in front of television cameras when they arrive for campaign stops.

The incident here involved a planned visit by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. His staff wanted an audience for him to address at a high-tech plant. They did not want a defense plant because current scandals in that industry might distract Dukakis from the less volatile high-tech issues that he planned to discuss.

With one day’s notice, William R. Robertson, head of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation, was asked to arrange the event, and it had to be near Los Angeles International Airport.

After dozens of hurried phone calls, talks with officers of the Communications Workers of America and General Telephone Co., the arrangements were completed.

The fact that a last-minute change in plans forced cancellation of the event for Dukakis doesn’t diminish the incident as a good example of the importance of labor’s ability to instantly help its political friends almost any place in the United States.

Robertson, by the way, is at the Atlanta convention as a delegate for the Rev. Jesse Jackson.