Government has not adequately investigated the potential economic impact of the Employment Amendment Act, Senate President Alf Oughton has argued.

The controversial bill, which passed through the House of Assembly on December 10 but was thrown out by the Senate five days later, would have made it mandatory for businesses to pay overtime to all non-professional employees who work over 40 hours a week.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette yesterday, Mr. Oughton rejected the angry response of Home Affairs Minister Randy Horton, who last week labelled the Senate's decision a “slap in the face” for Bermudian workers.

“Clearly those who oppose overtime pay need to look deep into their consciences and question their ‘profit is king' mentality',” Mr. Horton said.

But Mr. Oughton retorted that although he respected Government's “noble” intentions, he was still “somewhat anxious” about the impact of mandatory overtime legislation on certain sections of the local business community and particularly on consumer costs.

He labelled as “rash” Mr. Horton's argument that the expense of doing business would increase, but that local employers “would find some way to absorb the extra burden”.

“I am not at all surprised by Minister Horton's reaction,” he said. “But he is plainly wrong when he suggests that we only considered the profit of businesses when voting against the bill.

“I just don't think the Government has looked deeply enough at the likely economic impact of the legislation. Consumer costs are already high in Bermuda and you can bet your bottom dollar that businesses are going to pass the additional financial burden on to them if faced with a large mandatory increase in their payroll expenditure.”

“Furthermore I personally know of one restaurant which was considering opening later and closing earlier if time and a half overtime became mandatory as they simply could not cope with the extra cost,” he continued. “And I am not sure that would have been in anybody's best interests.”

Mr. Oughton pointed out that under the current legislation, there were provisions for inspectors employed by the Department of Home Affairs to police reported abuses - although this was not being as “proactively pursued” as it should be.

“I don't believe that there is wide-ranging employee abuse going on in Bermuda,” Mr. Oughton said.

“But if the inspector system at the Department of Labour was working more efficiently a lot more could be done to weed out abuses and hold employers to account.

“I am also concerned with the news that two-thirds of the Labour Advisory Council were not in favour of the overtime clause but Mr. Horton still went ahead with it because he thought he had the support of the BIU.”

“There is more flexibility out there between employer and employee than the Government is giving credit for,” he continued.

“And we cannot go racing blindly into something like this without a more profound investigation into the economic consequences. I do not think this has been properly thought through.”