Bob Adams, a bakery worker from Roseville, Minn., was among hundreds of workers protesting the U.S. Labor Department's plans to undermine federal overtime law. In the past two weeks alone, more than 62,000 workers have sent letters telling the U.S. Department of Labor not to abolish their rights to overtime pay?-the most mail the agency has received on any similar issue in a decade.

Adams, who is employed at Rainbow Foods and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, currently earns between $3,500 and $4,000 annually for approximately 300 hours of overtime. Under the proposed changes, he could be reclassified by his employer as exempt from overtime pay because a quarter of his time goes to administrative duties.

Those letters are among the more than 290,000 letters sent since late March to the Labor Department, members of Congress and President George W. Bush protesting attacks on the 40-hour workweek.

Bush administration proposals to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) could strip more than 8 million employees of their right to overtime after 40 hours of work a week, according to a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study, affecting far more workers than the 644,000 workers the Labor Department estimates will lose overtime.

The Labor Department?s proposed changes?which could take effect as early as this fall?were announced in March, but the department held no public hearings in advance of the June 30 comment deadline.

Marking the June 30 deadline, activists and workers rallied at the Labor Department in Washington, D.C., to protest the attack on the 40-hour workweek. The workers took to the streets after the Department of Labor advised the rally sponsors that a previously reserved Labor Department auditorium was unavailable.

Like Adams, anyone making more than $22,100 a year could be denied overtime under the proposed changes if they are classified as professional, administrative or executive employees exempt from federal overtime rules. Emergency medical technicians, cooks, social workers and police officers are among the 8 million workers who could be reclassified and lose overtime pay.

While a union contract protects Adams? overtime pay today, he said, ?We expect that at the next negotiation, the employer will say it can?t compete if it has to pay us overtime.?

At the same time, says Adams, his employer could make full-time employees work longer hours without pay?and might be tempted to abolish the part-time jobs held by workers who desperately need the approximately 15 hours of weekly work they now receive.

Information for this article was supplied by the AFL-CIO. For more on the overtime legislation, visit www.aflcio.org