The Fair Labor standards act was amended in 1994 and there were various changes that were made to the act. One of the changes was the establishment of 40 hours of work per week and payment at the rate of times one and a half the normal wage for non-exempt workers who worked for more than forty hours weekly. The act did not put a legal cap on the number of extra hours that an employer could assign but the bottom line was that additional hours had to be paid one and a half times more than the normal salary (Grossman, 1998). According to the act, an employer can assign more than 40 hours a week provided that the overtime is paid according to the stipulated rates. The changes in the fair labor standards act were incited by a campaign launched in the early years of the nineties by the labor policy organization and related societies and groups that demanded that the act be amended so that the workplace could become conducive to the family. They called for the modernization of the FLSA to create flexibility that would allow workers to have more time for their families. They called for the implementation of progressive statutes that would satisfy the demands of the modern workplace in a way that the workers would be more flexible.
There was opposition to a number of initiatives especially from diverse workers groups that they felt were not friendly to the workers. This led to the introduction of the varied comp times in the FLSA act after it was established that there was an urgent need of addressing the plight of working mothers who needed to be more flexible (Lechner, 2005). The FLSA act was therefore restructured to be in line with the modern workplace. However, there were groups that criticized the move, claiming that the act would undermine the clauses that protect the workers and would complicate the scheduling of work. Their other change was on the clause on Comp time. The changes gave flexibility to the employees to manage their own comp time in agreement with the employers. This drew criticism and support across the political and industrial divide. The first criticism was that comp time was an option that the low salaried worker could not afford. Economists were also opposed to the proposal for the amendments saying that the enactment of the comp time clause into the FLSA act would jeopardize the operations of many businesses and would also intrude into the managerial processes of organizations. This is because, on one end, the workers will have the freedom to arrive and depart at will as comp time accrues while on the other end, they would have their freedom of choice of comp time-constrained and they may not be able to effectively use the accrued comp time.
Generally, the issue of amendment of the FLSA act on comp time has had many supporters and critics. On one hand, is the argument of flexibility especially for working mums and it is usually fronted in the interest of the bosses. However, there are those who wish the status quo to stay and this includes spokespersons for organized labor. The beauty of the amendments is that the employer and the employee can set a reservoir of comp time where a worker works continuously, accumulating comp hours, and then takes leave at a time when it would not be disruptive to the operations of the organization (Mettler, 1994). This means that a worker can be assigned 65 hour work weeks for a number of months and then draw comp time on the subsequent months. This would markedly boost the flexibility of the worker and make the workplace friendly to the personal schedules of the employees.
References
Grossman, J. (1998). “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage”. Monthly Labor Review 101 (6): 22–30.
Lechner, J. P. (2005). “The New FLSA White-Collar Regulations—Analysis of Changes”. Florida Bar Journal 79 (2): 20.
Mettler, S.B. (1994). Gender, & the Fair Labor Standards Act “. Polity 26 (4): 635–654