Opponents of the Bush administration?s new overtime regulations may make another attempt to restore overtime pay eligibility for millions of workers.

Congress is set to reconvene for a lame-duck session Tuesday, when it will take up the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill. In September, bipartisan majorities on the Senate Appropriations Committee and in the House passed amendments to the spending bill by Reps. David Obey, D-Wis., and George Miller, D-Calif., that would change the new regulations.

The amendment would force the U.S. Department of Labor to rescind overtime pay eligibility changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act rules, but let stand new inflation adjustment rules that will benefit some 384,000 low-income workers.

Bush has threatened to veto the appropriations bill, which includes funds for health care and education, if it contains the amendment. But workers are faxing the White House, asking Bush to take back his overtime pay cut, according to the national AFL-CIO, which is helping to organize the effort. Since the Bush administration announced the overtime pay cuts in March 2003?the first major rollback of worker pay protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act since it was passed in 1938?workers have sent more than 1.6 million letters, e-mails and faxes in protest, the federation said.

Under the new rules, some 6 million workers across the United States could be forced to work longer hours for no extra pay.

Adapted from the national AFL-CIO website, www.aflcio.org