H.R. 1180 – Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017 (Rep. Roby, R-AL, and 17 cosponsors)
May 2, 2017
(House)
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
H.R. 1180 – Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017
(Rep. Roby, R-AL, and 17 cosponsors)
The Administration supports H.R. 1180, the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017. H.R. 1180 would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to allow private-sector employers to give their employees the choice to receive paid time off instead of cash payments for each hour of time for which overtime compensation would otherwise be required. The bill would extend to private-sector workers a choice that public-sector employees have long enjoyed.
H.R. 1180 would help American workers balance the competing demands of family and work by giving them flexibility to earn paid time off—time they can later use for any reason, including family commitments like attending school appointments and caring for a sick child. In addition, H.R. 1180 contains critical protections to ensure employees can continue to choose overtime pay and to prohibit employers from coercing their employees to accept compensatory time instead of overtime pay.
If H.R. 1180 were presented to the President in its current form, his advisors would recommend that he sign the bill into law.
My take is that given the existing system that we have (over 40 hours and you have to give 1.5X pay) I think this is an improvement. It gives people the option to choose which is a good thing. Keep in mind gov’t gets to do comp time without 1.5X pay. And guess what they know they require people to do take the comp time and not the extra pay, so that’s why they are against it for private sector. They don’t want people time shifting work and shifting extra money which means extra taxes.