FLEXIBLE WORK SCHEDULES COULD MEAN HAPPIER EMPLOYEES

Flexible schedules for American workers who get paid by the hour make sense. And the plan offered by U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri deserve full consideration.

Basically, the Family-Friendly Workplace Act would allow workers and their employers to agree on schedules that allow overtime to be carried over to the next workweek when compensating time could be taken off. Current federal wage-and-hour rules, in place since the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was adopted, don't allow this carryover from one workweek to the next. These rules require compensating time to be taken in the same week that overtime is accumulated or compensation for the overtime at one and half times the hourly rate.

When those rules were adopted nearly 60 years ago, the workplace was far different than today. Few mothers of school-age children worked in those days. Now more than 70 percent of mothers hold jobs. This makes for some interesting scheduling problems, and employers tend to wind up paying overtime to employees who would have been just as happy to take time off the following week.

Ashcroft's bill would make sure this flexible system is used only when both employees and employers agree. No employee would be forced to take time off instead of getting overtime pay, and no employer would be forced to use the flex plan rather than paying overtime.

One indication that flexibility works is the fact that federal employees have had this option for nearly 20 years. In 1978 such a system was put in place for federal workers who continue to favor the plan 10 to 1 and who say the flexibility has improved morale and productivity.

Opponents of the plan seem to think flexible work rules would somehow shortchange workers or impose added cost on employers. But in reality neither of these are apt to happen with the provisions of Ashcroft's bill.

It is was past time that the same work privileges given to federal workers should be extended to the rest of the American workforce. Having the choice of time off or extra pay seems like a sensible plan that most workers would welcome.