During a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) spoke about protecting small businesses.
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00:04Ms. McCutcheon, in 2018, President Trump signed an executive order to exempt seasonal outdoor recreational businesses operating on federal lands from certain FLSA requirements, such as overtime.
00:17These businesses offer multi-day trips that quickly hit the 40-hour mark to trigger an overtime requirement.
00:22The executive order stated that unless the exemptions were in place, federal regulations would threaten to raise significantly the cost of guided hikes and tours on federal lands, preventing many, many visitors from enjoying this great experience.
00:36With your background at the wage and hour division and private practice, can you explain what relief this executive order provided for these businesses?
00:46Yes, thank you for the question.
00:48That was great, but it's also any sort of business that does tours, whether on federal lands or not, because, you know, when you're doing an overnight hike, which Americans love to do, I live now in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, we love to do those overnight hikes.
01:09But if you have an employee who's on federal land doing those overnight hikes, you're going to hit over 40 hours very, very quickly because you're basically on duty 24 hours.
01:19So a two-day trip gets you into overtime, and that means more costs, and that means charging Americans more to go on those trips.
01:31So, again, it's a win-win for America because more people get to enjoy our national parks and our national lands at a much lower cost.
01:39And I would imagine also negatively impact a small business owner trying to run a business because of the extra cost that's demanded at this point.
01:46And that is what most of these businesses are, are small, independent businesses.
01:50I was just looking up the other day to rent an e-bike to go on Cades Cove Drive in the Great Smoky Mountains on non-car day, and that's a small business, right?
02:00So the people who are providing this work are small businesses who, by the way, this gets to the whole wage theft thing, they don't know that they're violating the law.
02:09And if they don't know and they get hit with a deal of investigation or private litigation, they can be bankrupted because they're just trying no good deed, codes unpunished.
02:20I'm going to kind of wrap up just one last statement, but I'll just say this.
02:24It's time for us now to truly protect the small business owners.
02:27That's where it powers our middle class, which is where our culture comes from.
02:30So I applaud the business owners to take this risk and go out, and we're going to make sure we can do everything we can to protect them.
02:39Later this spring, I will be introducing an outdoor recreational outfitting and guiding act.
02:44This would exempt eligible employees from overtime limits in order to support and expand the outdoor tourism industry.
02:54I will encourage more Americans to experience the natural beauty of our nation that it has to offer,
02:59and this bill will be a step in the right direction to create a long-term solution for outfitters and guides
03:03that would have been unfairly affected by its onerous requirement of the Fair Labor Standard Act.
03:10So thank you, Chairman, and now you're back.
03:14All right.
03:16All right.
03:16All right.