Jobs With No Overtime Pay

Re “White House Raises Limit for Overtime Pay,” April 20: I fully understand the willingness of the Bush administration to eliminate the bonus for overtime. Heck, if I were earning $127,000 a year (or more), I would expect to do overtime for that pay. But if my income is around $24,000 a year, which includes overtime, an elimination of overtime would severely cut my take-home pay. Would it be all right if I rejected an overtime assignment? Or does the law require that I accept overtime assignments without being paid a bonus for the work? Or can my employer fire me for not accepting overtime assignments?

Part of the logic of a bonus for overtime pay is that the employer then has an incentive to hire another employee at straight time, which creates more jobs. So, instead of making an effort to create more jobs (which has been the vaunted aim of our fearless leader), the Bush administration is making it easier for employers to get more work from fewer people for less money. Is there something wrong here?

Michael Kane

Palm Desert

It’s amazing how many of Bush’s new policies and laws won’t take effect until after the election, thereby preventing the American people from really realizing and understanding the negative effects these laws will have on their lives. There are the tax changes for middle- and low-income families, Medicare changes and now no guarantee of overtime for workers who make over $24,000 a year -- as if that number puts a person in some kind of category of wealth and leisure, when it’s well below the poverty line.

Bush has cleverly been marketing all of his abusive and frightening new plans as if they were a great boon to the American public at large, when in fact it is just the opposite in every case.

Elizabeth Thompson

Coronado