COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio House passed legislation that would exempt employers from paying overtime to workers for commuting and checking messages off-hours.
Senate Bill 47 passed 56 to 37, with Democrats voting against it, calling it “wage theft.”
The bill now heads back to the Ohio Senate for a vote on whether to concur with amendments made in the Ohio House.
Ohio’s overtime law requires employers to pay 1 times the employee’s regular hourly wage for hours worked in excess of 40 in a seven-day workweek. The state’s law is similar to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
Under SB 47, employers wouldn’t have to pay workers for walking, riding and traveling to and from the primary workplace. They wouldn’t have to pay overtime for “insubstantial or insignificant periods of time beyond the employee’s scheduled working hours.”
Republican bill sponsors, Sens. Andrew Brenner of Delaware County and Bob Peterson of Fayette County, testified in a House committee the tasks would include workers “checking their schedule, listening to voicemails, or reading emails.”
The bill provides clarity to Ohio law, after a U.S. Supreme court decision that states employers aren’t liable for overtime when employees perform minimal amounts of work, “without direction from their employer,” they said.
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