Steve Poizner: CA has “extreme labor laws”…huh?

September 28th, 2009. By AbiK

That was a quote taken from potential California gubernatorial candidate (and state Insurance Commissioner) Steve Poizner at the California Republican State Convention on Sept. 26th, as reported on in the Los Angeles Times.

Extreme? How you ask? Well, Poizner seems to think that having California labor laws that require overtime pay to kick in after 8 hours are worked in a given day is a bit extreme. He points out that “almost every other state” only requires overtime to kick in after a full 40-hour week has been worked.

Here’s the part I find interesting though—I’ll let you read the excerpt first:

Third part of my plan is to align our labor laws with the rest of the country. Now, I’ve been an employer; a lot of you have hired folks, a lot of you care about workers just as much as anybody. Why does California have to have extreme labor laws that make us stick out like a sore thumb? 

For example, only in California and a couple other states do you have to pay overtime after eight hours in a day rather than 40 hours in a week like almost in every other state. Now who does that hurt?  It hurts workers who want to work four 10-hour days but they can’t do that.  What employer would allow you to do that because they have to pay overtime? Let’s all align our laws, our labor code, with federal labor standards so that we can be in sync with the rest of the economy.

What planet is Poizner living on? Does he honestly think that workers WANT to work a 10-hour day at their regular rate of pay? I challenge anyone to put such a pay plan into effect for one week to test this out. Betcha you won’t find too many workers lining up to work extra hours for straight pay.

There are some points that Poizner makes relative to his candidacy run that I agree with—public school reform is one—but in this instance, maybe Poizner’s been logging a few too many hours with the VC elite in Silicone Valley vs. sitting in the shoes of a car wash attendent down in SoCal.

 

Tags: California labor law, California Overtime, Overtime

This was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.