Overtime Rule Change May Be Challenged

SACRAMENTO — The Legislature’s lawyer believes that it may be illegal for the Industrial Welfare Commission to scrap California’s eight-hour overtime law, a Democratic assemblyman said Tuesday.

The five-member labor panel, appointed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, voted 3 to 2 last week to require employers to pay overtime rates only after an employee’s work week exceeds 40 hours. For decades, the law in California has placed overtime on a daily basis, payable to employees for any time worked over eight hours.

Democratic Assemblyman Wally Knox of Los Angeles said that an opinion he requested from the nonpartisan legislative counsel has found that the commission may not have the authority to change the overtime rules that cover about 8 million nonunion California workers. A final opinion by the counsel’s office will be made later, Knox said.

In response to Knox’s assertion, an official with Wilson’s Department of Industrial Relations said the commission’s vote was made on sound legal grounds.

John Duncan, the department’s chief deputy director, said he was “quite certain that the legal challenge would fall short.”

He said the change sought for California would merely conform with overtime rules in effect in 47 states and in the federal government.

The commission’s decision to switch to the 40-hour overtime rule, which could be implemented by May, has prompted vigorous opposition from Democratic lawmakers and organized labor.

Wilson has stirred up a “wedge issue” with which to confront Democrats and labor, but the public is against him, Knox said.

Unwittingly, “Pete Wilson has begun the movement to protect the eight-hour day,” the Democratic lawmaker said.

Knox said that by conservative estimates, California wage earners would lose $1 billion a year under the proposed change, which he said would allow employers to schedule workers for long hours but pay no overtime.

Wilson and other proponents of switching to a 40-hour overtime standard have said that employees, as well as their bosses, would benefit from the more “flexible” rules.

Knox said a preliminary reading of state law, conveyed to him orally by legislative counsel lawyers, indicated that the state’s overtime laws governing nonunion workers could be repealed or altered only by lawmakers.

The legislative counsel’s office declined to discuss the issue or the conversation with the assemblyman. But Knox said that the basic eight-hour rule is enshrined in law and, given what the legislative counsel has told him so far, “the governor can’t change that without coming to the Legislature.”

The entire dispute, Knox said, is likely to wind up in the courts.