President Barack Obama's Labor Department has been working on
new overtime rules for months, and is
poised to issue the new rules raising the current overtime threshold and potentially adding millions of workers into the overtime eligibility classification. That means raises for millions.
As early as this week, the Labor Department could propose a rule that would raise the current overtime threshold—$23,660—to as much as $52,000, extending time and a half overtime pay to millions of American workers. The rule has already come under fire from business and Republican opponents who say it will kill jobs and force employers to cut hours for salaried employees.
"The minimum wage they can't do," said Bill Samuel, director of legislative affairs for the AFL-CIO. "This is probably the most significant step they can take to raise wages for millions of workers." […]
By law, any salaried worker who earns below a threshold set by the Labor Department must receive overtime. The current threshold of $23,660 lies below the poverty line for a family of four. […]
The overtime threshold is not indexed to inflation and has been updated only once since 1975. It covers 12 percent of salaried workers. Boosting the threshold to $50,440 would bring it back in line with the 1975 threshold, after inflation. By one estimate that would give somewhere between five to ten million workers a raise.
The current rules have an exemption for the white collar employees, which excludes "executive, administrative and professional." Many companies—including fast food retailers—have interpreted that definition to any employee with "supervisory" duties so store managers and regular employees with nominal supervisory roles will be excluded. The new regulations are expected to tighten up that definition as well. As Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin told Politico, "it’s hard to believe that somebody making $30,000 is a supervisor. […] At this point, I don’t think even our regulations are in line with the original intent of the law."
Republicans want none of that, of course, believing that employers should be able to squeeze every bit of work out of their employees—without paying them adequately for it—as possible. That's why a measly eleven percent of current salaried workers qualify, as opposed to 65 percent in 1975. So of course this is a "job-killing" proposal for Republicans. It's likely to be challenged both legislatively and in court.