Testimony — Erin Ryan in Opposition to Senate Bill 47, Ohio House Commerce & Labor Committee

Summary

Testimony of Erin Ryan, Managing Director of the Ohio Women's Public Policy Network, in opposition to Senate Bill 47 (Overtime Pay) before the Ohio House Commerce & Labor Committee. Ryan describes the network as a coalition of nearly 40 organizations that advocate for public policy solutions building economic opportunity for women and their families. The testimony says the bill would codify language from Section 254 of the federal Portal-to-Portal Act that benefits employers while failing to codify any of the employee protections. It urges the committee to reject Senate Bill 47.

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                                    TESTIMONY OF:
                                        Erin Ryan
                                    Managing Director
                             Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network

                                   IN OPPOSITION TO:
                                       Senate Bill 47
                                       Overtime Pay
                             House Commerce & Labor Committee
                                     February 15, 20222

Chair Stein, Vice Chair Johnson, Ranking Minority Member Lepore-Hagan and distinguished
members of the Ohio House Commerce & Labor Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
provide testimony today in opposition to Senate Bill 47.

My name is Erin Ryan and I serve as the Managing Director of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy
Network (WPPN), a coalition of nearly 40 organizations that collectively advocate for public
policy solutions that build economic opportunity for women and their families. We believe that
the measure of success for our state and communities is largely determined by the success of
Ohio’s women. Therefore, policymakers must advance public policies centered in equity,
fairness, and justice that address the following issue areas:
    1. Promoting an economic security agenda for women;
    2. Ensuring fairness and opportunity in the workplace; and
    3. Improving women’s health and well-being

These policy goals guide WPPN’s work and shaped our interest in testifying today in opposition
to Ohio’s Senate Bill 47, legislation that would unnecessarily curtail overtime payments for
certain Ohio workers. The bill would codify into Ohio Revised Code language from Section 254
of the federal Portal-to-Portal Act, changing state overtime rules. While the bill applies the
language from the law that is beneficial to employers, it fails to codify any of the employee
protections, leaving behind workers in Ohio.

No matter what we do for a living, all of us work hard for our families and deserve a job where
we are treated with dignity and respect. Over the last few decades, women have made great
strides in workforce participation. However, women – particularly Black and brown women –
still face substantial barriers to achieving economic self-sufficiency, in part due to workplace
policies that hold back workers from reaching their full economic potential. This includes
legislation like Senate Bill 47, which would add new restrictions to what is covered under
state overtime payments while limiting the protections that are available to workers.

Senate Bill 47 would add language taken directly from the Portal-to-Portal Act, as well as new
language that is not found in the federal code, to include the following activities as
non-compensable for overtime wage purposes:
    1. Walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal
       activity or activities that the employee is employed to perform;
    2. Activities that are preliminary to or postliminary to the principal activity or activities;
    3. Activities requiring insubstantial or insignificant periods of time beyond the employee's
       scheduled working hours.

Under these new restrictions, especially given the undefined language of “insubstantial and
insignificant” in section 3, there are a number of types of workers who would have additional
restrictions added to their ability to receive overtime pay, including:
    ● Employees who work in one primary location while being called to various secondary
         locations, such as home healthcare aides.
    ● Employees who have to put on protective equipment or perform another form of expected
         task “preliminary or postliminary to the principal activity,” such as nurses and other
         healthcare workers, retail workers, or restaurant workers.

And while the bill enumerates exceptions for when workers would still be allowed overtime
payments, the language is much more narrow, restrictive, and open to interpretation than the
language in the Portal-to-Portal Act, specifically:
    1. The employee performs the activity during the regular work day or during prescribed
       hours.
    2. The employee performs the activity at the specific direction of the employer.

The undefined language in these two exceptions leave the application of the law open to court
interpretation, providing larger businesses more opportunity to take cases to litigation and
leaving workers with less protection. This bill will not impact all workers in Ohio, but it does
take steps to limit overtime payments for certain workers, including sectors that primarily
employ women, that fall under the limitations of the bill while also opening the door to future
restrictions.
Even prior to the pandemic, women consistently faced barriers within Ohio’s labor market,
including disproportionate representation in low-security and low-wage jobs. The unemployment
and economic ramifications of the pandemic have hit women the hardest, particularly Black and
Latina women. Women’s systemic labor market barriers threaten their economic security, as well
as that of their families as women play an increasingly integral role in securing their families’
livelihood. The restrictions to overtime pay that Senate Bill 47 would enact, while leaving out
crucial worker protections, would threaten women working in a number of sectors that already
face low pay and lack of labor protections.

On behalf of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network, I respectfully urge the committee to
reject Senate Bill 47, legislation that would chip away at worker protections for overtime
pay and ultimately hurt the economic opportunity of hardworking Ohioans.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I am available to answer any questions by email at
ryan@innovationohio.org.

Sincerely,

Erin Ryan
Managing Director
The Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network


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