Many Calif. Workers Will Lose Daily OT

The New Year will ring in bad news for many California workers accustomed to pocketing daily overtime pay.

In a survey of 678 employers released Thursday, 73% of the businesses said they will stop paying daily overtime as a result of state rules taking effect Jan. 1.

The poll provides an early sign of how widespread the pullback will be among employers from the longtime practice in California of paying overtime to workers any time they put in more than eight hours in a single day.

It figures to dash speculation that arose earlier this year, when California authorities voted to scrap mandatory daily overtime. At that time, some observers said a significant number of employers might voluntarily continue paying the premium rather than risk antagonizing workers.

The new state standard, which largely matches federal rules, still mandates that hourly workers receive overtime pay when they put in more than 40 hours in a given week. But if, for example, they work four 10-hour days a week, they no longer have to be paid overtime. Under the rules being repealed next month, such workers have been entitled to two hours of time-and-one-half overtime pay for each of their 10-hour days.

The daily overtime repeal covers many of the state’s biggest industries and, overall, applies to organizations employing more than 8 million California workers, or in excess of half of the work force.

Perhaps the main losers will be part-timers who work fewer than five days a week but who toil for long hours when they are on the job.

The poll, by the Los Angeles-based business association the Employers Group, found that nearly all banks, hotels and restaurants plan to scrap daily overtime. At the opposite end of the spectrum were hospitals and other health-care facilities, only half of whom said they would stop paying daily overtime.

Business groups, and some employees, backed the state’s decision to scrap daily overtime, saying it would free employers to permit more flexible work schedules. Supporters of the repeal contend that employers will be more willing to let staffers take off early one day to do such things as care for a sick child and then make up the work time another day.

Organized labor, however, pushed hard to maintain daily overtime. Union leaders have regarded daily overtime as a safeguard against demands for workers to put in unwanted, unscheduled overtime.

Some employers say the new overtime rules will simply legalize informal arrangements that already are widespread in the workplace. A manager of a plumbing products manufacturing company who asked not to be identified said she already allows one of her clerical employees to leave early on days that she needs to take her child to after-school psychological counseling.

“The truth is, I have let her make up the time and then I pay her for her regular 40 hours, but I was uncomfortable doing it,” the manager said.

The manager said she couldn’t pay the worker overtime for the days she worked longer than eight hours because of a company policy against approving overtime to workers with routine clerical jobs.