Feb. 24--After a month of late nights at the office, your project is finished.

You've racked up enough overtime for a plane ticket to Disneyland.

But if you'd rather earn back your free time -- by getting compensatory time off -- than pocket the cash, try working for Uncle Sam.

For private sector employees, "comp time" arrangements are illegal.

Although all government employees collect either money or paid time off for their extra hours worked -- at time-and-a-half rates -- workers at private companies are entitled to mandatory overtime.

Now, the Bush administration is advocating comp time as a way to give all employees more flexibility and freedom. Toward that end, the Labor Department is planning a survey of 1,000 households that will ask workers about their efforts to balance work and family responsibilities and their interest in comp time as an option.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao touts the idea on the agency's Web site.

"If a worker wants to convert time-and-a-half into comp time -- to go to their child's soccer game -- he or she should have that choice," she says.

Of course, some employers already make informal arrangements with their workers -- offering a day off later in exchange for a weekend shift now, or allowing them to clock extra hours for several nights before ducking out early for a weekday matinee.

Such deals generally violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, even if the worker receives time-and-a-half compensation for hours that exceed the weekly limit of 40 hours, says Rick Levy, legal director of the Texas AFL-CIO.

That's because overtime rules were designed in the 1930s to pinch the bottom lines of businesses where employees work long hours.

Time-and-a-half pay discourages employers from piling duties onto their workers and improves employees' quality of life, Levy says.

"They have an opportunity to have a life outside their work," he says. "Those same policy considerations still exist, with great force."

Levy, whose group opposes the comp-time proposal, says he worries that employers will demand ever more hours from their workers if they're no longer obligated to pay them extra cash.

Often in the public sector, it's up to employers -- not workers -- whether hours worked will be converted into overtime or comp time and when employees can tap their comp time, he says.

"It doesn't promote flexibility because it's all at the employer's beck and call," Levy says.

Workplace flexibility has taken on such significance because of employees' evolving habits.

An ongoing study by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute found in 1997 -- the most recent year of data available -- that married Americans with children were spending less time on personal activities than 20 years earlier.

"Parents are working longer hours, but they're not sacrificing time with their child," says Erin Brownfield, a spokeswoman for the organization. "What they are sacrificing is time for themselves."

Still, it's unclear whether comp time would improve matters, Brownfield says, because a more recent study revealed some workers simply passing up free time.

"We did find that many employees feel quite overworked," she says.

"Nonetheless, employees don't always feel comfortable taking the vacation time to which they're entitled."

That's most often the case among employees in workplaces with rigid cultures and those who believe that they don't have enough time to get all their responsibilities accomplished, she says.