Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A bill has been introduced in the Assembly to allow businesses to escape overtime pay for employees who put in more than eight hours in a day.
Already, the battle lines are drawn.
"This is a step backwards in labor law," said Danny Thompson, lobbyist for the state AFL-CIO. "We're not interested in retreating."
But Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Minden, who introduced Assembly Bill 211, said the bill would permit flexibility for employers in setting up work schedules.
"It allows employers to work with their employees to say you can work four 10-hour days and have three days off on the weekend," Hettrick said.
Hettrick said the bill would still require overtime -- or time-and-a-half pay -- for those who worked more than 40 hours a week. "It doesn't change the net effect," he said.
Employers, under the current law, are required to pay time and a half for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours a week or more than eight hours in any workday, unless -- by mutual agreement -- the employee works 10-hour days four days a week. This language would be deleted and overtime would be paid only for more than 40 hours a week.
The current law requiring time and a half be paid does not apply to those companies with less than $250,000 gross sales volume. The bill would raise the threshold to $500,000. Hettrick said the $250,000 figure "is so small it wouldn't help anybody. We're trying to get it up to $500,00 for more employers to qualify."
The bill, he said, was sought by the Nevada Employers Association in Reno.
Thompson said this bill would not affect the 120,000 union members in Nevada who are covered by contracts with employers. They are protected in getting their overtime pay, Thompson said, but the other working men and women of the state are not.
"This precedent is not good for the working people and Nevada," Thompson said.
"One of the problems we have now in a lot of industries that are not unionized ... for example, the banking business ... is that we're becoming a society of part-time workers and one of the reasons is they (industry) do not have to pay benefits."
Twenty-five percent of the workers in Nevada have no health insurance, Thompson said.
"That has created a huge social problem and this is a step in that direction," Thompson said. "This is about Joe Blow in a right-to-work state and in a state with firing at-will. We don't need to take this step. This was fought during the industrial revolution and we don't want to go back that far again."
The current overtime pay law does not cover such people as salesmen working on commissions, outside buyers, workers in executive, administrative or professional capacities, employees of railroads, airlines, agriculture businesses, cab drivers or drivers of motor carriers.
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