Alaska wage laws should be changed for benefit of workers, employers

Frontiersman editorial board

The federal Fair Pay Act recently became law, and it has created great fodder for political campaigns and rhetorical discourse. In truth it will have little effect in Alaska, where overtime protections for workers are already more stringent than the federal language.

Indeed, Alaska's overtime rules are so stringent that they often cause more distress to workers and employers than they relieve.

For non-exempt workers -- primarily those who are paid on an hourly basis -- Alaska wage law requires overtime pay for any hours worked beyond eight per day and 40 per week. While this seems like a generous protection by the state, it often causes distress for businesses with limited overtime budgets, and for employees of those businesses.

Under those regulations, an employee who works a 10-hour day is guaranteed overtime protection for the extra two hours, whether or not he or she works a 40-hour week. In many other states, overtime regulations would allow the same worker to adjust work hours for the rest of the week so that the 40-hour standard work week would not be exceeded, and no overtime pay would ensue.

It could be argued that such flexible work hours are to the workers' disadvantage, but that is not always the case. Alaska's strict regulations could encourage employers to reduce a worker's weekly hours, or to adjust the worker's schedule in a way that eliminates the chance of overtime. That solution can reduce productivity, and can limit workers from creating a flexible schedule that enables them to complete their work in a sensible way.

Using our own newspaper as an example, if a reporter is required to attend an evening meeting, and she guesses the meeting will last two hours, she may choose to begin her day two hours later than normal. If the meeting runs three hours, she is entitled to overtime pay for that day. If she attempts to work normal eight-hour days the rest of the week, and then must attend another two-hour meeting on Saturday, she will also exceed the 40-hour minimum and receive an additional 2 hours of overtime pay. If the newspaper maintains strict overtime regulations, the reporter may have to miss the Saturday meeting, reducing her productivity and weakening the newspaper's ability to cover all of the news. If the reporter were allowed to work a six-hour day during that week, she would avoid overtime, and still not be shorted any regular hours.

We urge our legislators to review Alaska's overtime regulations to afford employers and workers the opportunity to negotiate mutually beneficial work schedules.