Committee Approves Bill to Let Busy Working Parents Choose More Time with Family

Committee Leaders Call for House Passage of the Family Time Flexibility Act (H.R. 1119) by Mother’s Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The House Education & the Workforce Committee today approved the Family Time Flexibility Act (H.R. 1119), bipartisan, family-friendly legislation that would allow busy private sector workers to trade overtime hours worked for comp time to spend with their families, a right enjoyed by public sector workers for nearly 20 years. The bill, introduced by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), is now ready for action by the full House of Representatives. Committee leaders have called for House passage by Mother's Day, which is May 11th.

“Many employers and employees alike want to have this option, but the federal government won’t let them have it,” Biggert said. “The public sector has had the option for years. Yet the law governing the private sector has been frozen for more than 60 years, locked in a time when women worked in the home, most families had only one wage earner, and nobody went to kids’ soccer games. Times have changed, families have changed, the workplace has changed. Yet the law has not changed.”

The bipartisan legislation has 79 cosponsors, including House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (R-OH), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), Nancy Johnson (R-CT), and Democrat Reps. William Lipinski (D-IL) and Charles Stenholm (D-TX). The bill would allow busy men and women, through a voluntary agreement with their employers, to choose paid time off as compensation for working overtime hours. The legislation includes strong protections to prevent employers from coercing workers into accruing or using comp time rather than cash overtime, just like in current overtime law.

“The need for this legislation is clear," said Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner R-OH). "Federal law has not been modernized to address the enormous changes in the workplace and the composition of the workforce - for example, the tremendous increase in the number of women who work outside the home and two-earner families."

Boehner noted that the concept of family time has had strong bipartisan support in the past, including from former President Clinton, who said in his 1997 State of the Union address that Congress should pass a comp time bill so that “workers can choose to be paid for overtime in income or trade it in for time off to be with their families.”

“Republicans support family time, Democrats have supported it, President Bush campaigned on this family-friendly proposal and former President Clinton supported the concept of compensatory time, outlining his own proposal,” said Boehner. “Most workers simply want additional flexibility in the workplace and more choices than are currently available, and we should not deny them this opportunity.”

Under current law, private sector workers are prohibited from arranging a flexible work schedule. H.R. 1119 amends the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, which denies working parents the opportunity to have a more flexible, family-oriented schedule. If the employer and the employee (or, in union shops, the union) agree, employees can begin banking up to 160 hours of paid time off, to use at the worker’s discretion. The employee is entitled to cancel the arrangement at any time.

The Family Time Flexibility Act was passed by the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections on April 3, 2003.