OT dispute no labor of love. (Our Line).

IT was just over a year ago when a federal judge approved a settlement between some 1,500 current and former Pacific Bell engineers who alleged that their employer failed to pay them for overtime worked.

The plaintiffs claimed that they worked an average of 50 hours per week. Per California law the workers should have received OT for any time in excess of 40 hours. Pac Bell countered that the employees--few of which had professional engineering degrees--fell under a classification known as professionals and were exempt from the law. Ultimately the two sides chose to settle.

Under the agreement Pacific Bell will compensate class members for an estimated 57,273 employee months. The cost to Pac Bell? A cool $35 million. It doesn't take an engineering degree to calculate the potential windfall to workers should they begin matching their pocket protectors with class-action suits.

Stirring the waters now is the proposed change to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which mandates the 40-hour workweek and overtime pay. FLSA says companies must pay employees time-and-a-half for weekly hours of more than 40. There are exceptions for executives, administrators and professionals.

Employees falling in this so-called "exempt" category are defined as those who supervise two or more people and earn at least $8,060 annually. But as any HR manager knows, it's much more complicated than that. To wit, outside sales staff--those who spend 80% or more of their working time away from the company office--are exempt, but inside salespersons aren't.

How any new rules should read depends on who is asked.

The Labor Department says the job classifications described in FLSA aren't up to date. It points to cases in which workers who manage two others and make $15,000 are exempt, while a $100,000-a-year engineer gets overtime benefits.

The Bush administration says that by raising the salary limit, more low-paid workers would qualify for OT pay. This may be offset, the government acknowledges, if certain categories of workers are moved to exempt, as proposed.

Businesses argue that the existing law is outdated and wasn't intended to supplement the incomes of well-paid white-collar workers.

Unions say overtime should be available to all workers. The AFL-CIO says the rule was "designed to discourage" employers from requiring excessive hours. Big bucks are at stake: In the past two years Farmers Insurance paid out $90 million, Radio Shack forked over $30 million, and Starbucks and UPS coughed up $18 million each to settle overtime complaints. Overall, the Labor Department awarded $143 million to workers in back pay settlements last year and $111 million in 2001. That's a whole lot of pocket protectors.

The AFL-CIO estimated.80 million employees were covered by the overtime rule in 1999. According to Kirk-Miller Associates, fulltime PCB industry employment as of March 2003 was 42,000. While we don't have any hard data, we'd bet dollars to doughnuts that many of those 42,000 work overtime in their present jobs.

As you read this, the Labor Department is expected to issue proposed changes for public comment. (We'll keep a running account at pcdandm.com.) As an issue that stands to affect the vast majority of us, it would behoove PCD&M readers to make their voices heard.

P.S. To say the business environment has been hell on workers is one big "duh." If you didn't feel bad enough already, the unemployment rate for EEs rose to an unprecedented 7% in the first quarter, according to the Labor Department, up from 3.9% sequentially and a full point worse than the quarterly figure for all workers. (The previous high was 4.8%, although it should be noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has revamped the way it classifies and tabulates the numbers.) Our kudos to IMAPS, Cadence and Mentor Graphics, who are among the organizations offering free training services and workshops to qualified displaced workers.