DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997                TAG: 9703280016

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

VICTIM OF POLITICS: LEGISLATION TO MAKE WORK RULES MORE FLEXIBLE IS WHIPSAWED BY PARTISANS.

After an unpleasant fight, the House passed the pleasantly named Working Families Flexibility Act. The Senate has yet to take up the matter, and the president threatens a veto even though he endorsed the idea as recently as the State of the Union address. Passions run high regarding this seemingly innocuous legislation. Why?

The bill calls for workers to be given the choice of 1 1/2 hours of cash wages or 1 1/2 hours of comp time for each hour over 40 worked in a seven-day period.

Employers and employees would have to formalize the agreement and include it as a part of elective bargaining arrangements. It would be necessary to allow employees to take their comp time within a reasonable period and to opt out of the agreement with 30 days' notice. If comp time isn't used within a year, employers would be required to pay cash instead.

All this sounds like an admirable innovation in an era of single mothers and dual-earner households where an hour or two of time may be more attractive than a few extra dollars. Yet a lot of high-decibel name-calling has greeted the legislation.

Unions worry darkly that a plot to deprive workers of hard-won rights is afoot. Their legislative supporters say workers will be forced to take comp time whether they want to or not. They claim a Senate version of the bill that includes flextime provisions could permit employers to schedule workers for 60 hours of work one week and 20 the next without paying overtime.

Clearly, final legislation ought to guard against this kind of abuse. But fears on both sides of the issue seem overblown. It's possible, as unions suggest, that some unscrupulous employers may seek to abuse workers as the Fair Labor Standards Act from the 1930s is altered. It may also be true, as some employers allege, that unions are more concerned with retaining power than in their own members' best interests.

But it ought to be possible to craft legislation that will permit greater flexibility for workers and employers without permitting one side to take advantage of the other. And possible abuse shouldn't be allowed to veto actual reform.

Federal workers who are not subject to existing laws already enjoy some of the flextime advantages this legislation would grant. Many regard them as attractive benefits.

After touting the concept, President Clinton complains that the present bill ``fails to guarantee real choice for employees (and) real protection against employer abuse.'' His veto threat is presumably intended to prompt changes in the Senate version or the conference language, but it could be a sign he and opponents of the bill are more interested in pleasing labor constituents than in supporting reasonable legislation.

Critics should stop borrowing trouble and start trying to devise the best bill possible. Done right, this legislation could prove useful to millions of stressed workers and to employers trying to adapt to changing times.

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