Ted Rall writes for a generation unjustly maligned as a pack of lazy slackers. He voices Generation X's frustration and resentment at the excesses of the baby boomers who've left a spent America in their mammoth wake. Ted's irreverent attitude and deft use of satire combine to make his work as fun to read as it is thought-provoking. And Ted's ability to connect with current culture gives his writing an of-the-moment perspective that is edgy and sharp.

THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR

NEW YORK -- "Lord, I am so tired!

"How long can this go on?"

-- Devo, "Working in a Coalmine," 1980

As Al Gore and George W. Bush stuff newsprint and airwaves with stormy debates over school prayer, subliminal advertising, and when and how school prayer and subliminal advertising should be debated, congressional Democrats and Republicans and the president of the United States are quietly conspiring to stab you, the American worker, in the back of your wallet.

You won't hear about this on talk radio. You won't read about it on the editorial page. And the politicians sure aren't talking about it, because they're all in on it together, quietly sucking up to their corporate buddies while sticking it to the rest of us.

Here's what's up: Employers spent the ersatz microboom of the '80s and the megarecession of the early '90s laying off every worker who wasn't nailed down. But when the economy started to recover six years ago, they didn't do what you or I would do -- hire back the layoff victims. Instead these clever scum dumped the extra work on their smaller workforces and pocketed the profits, driving up the stock market while the vast majority of employees busily counted their 3 percent annual raises between shifts.

True, the new-tech economy created a big labor shortage, but the bosses still got away with keeping salaries stagnant. They farmed out jobs overseas through free-trade agreements and replaced staffers with zero-benefit full-time pseudotemps and faux independent contractors. It also doesn't hurt that virtually none of the new dot-com workers have union representation.

But the truly spectacular CEO profits of the '90s came from a loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The law requires that employers pay workers time-and-a-half for each hour worked over 40 hours per week, but makes an exception for salaried managerial professionals. Sixty percent of the jobs created during the '90s are officially classified as white-collar managers and professionals. Of course, hardly any of them actually qualify as white-collar in any respect other than working in an office and possibly being required to wear suits at work. Rather than tell other employees what to do, they're high-tech drones with no more autonomy than an assembly-line worker. Calling these people manager-pros, however, allows their employers to work them 50, 60 and 70 hours a week without paying them a cent to ruin their marriages and alienate their kids.

In recent years, however, courts have repeatedly ruled that employers are breaking the law when they chintz on overtime by calling all of their workers managers. So your elected representatives in Washington have come up with a cynical solution to keep their golfing buddies out of prison: Rather than enforce the existing law, they've proposed amendments to a pending $1-an-hour minimum wage increase bill that would define everyone from computer network analysts to sales clerks to funeral directors as managers ineligible for overtime pay. There's also an intentionally complicated proposal to let your boss slash your regular pay and make up the difference in bonuses, with the result that your overtime would be based on the new lower wage.

And lest you be unaware of this, workers in all 50 states can be fired for refusing to work overtime. Your boss can make you work the next 100 hours in a row, and there's nothing you can do about it but quit.

Until recently, paying overtime at a 150 percent rate provided a strong financial inducement to hire more people. If the bills currently pending pass -- and the smart money says they will -- overtime work will be free to employers. Look forward to the weird spectacle of an economic boom during which corporations lay off tens of thousands of people; more and more corporations will have fewer and fewer remaining employees to turn into double-time slaves.

So who's going to stop these evil bastards from legally stealing our labor?

Not me! I'm too busy working.

(Ted Rall, a cartoonist and columnist for Universal Press Syndicate, is author of the forthcoming "Search and Destroy: Cartoons by Ted Rall.")