Raise the overtime pay threshold to the same equitable standards we had in 1975.
Here is your chance to make difference today by signing a petition urging President Obama to restore federal overtime standards to where they were in 1975. This would cover up to 65% of salaried workers (as it did in 1975). The equivalent salary threshold would be $69,000. In other words, if you make an annual salary less than $69,000, you would be eligible for overtime pay.
In addition, the current exemptions from overtime should be narrowed rather than expanded. Today, overtime exemptions other than for those who make $23,360 annually; extend to teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals (anyone who uses a computer), and a slew of job descriptions that include the word "professional."
Exemptions should make business sense. Good business is paying your employees equitably. The President can make this happen with a stroke of his pen. H.T. to Nick Hanauer.
If you'd like to move the dial and improve the standard of living for millions in the U.S., please link to and sign the petition here. Increase Overtime Pay
Inspiration for this idea came from Nick Hanauer's op ed in Politico "Whatever Happened to Overtime"
So what’s changed since the 1960s and '70s? Overtime pay, in part. Your parents got a lot of it, and you don’t. And it turns out that fair overtime standards are to the middle class what the minimum wage is to low-income workers: not everything, but an indispensable labor protection that is absolutely essential to creating a broad and thriving middle class. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week.
It was and is the law. However,
—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime.
By 2013, just 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime pay, according to a report published by the Economic Policy Institute.
The President has a solution at the tip of his pen...
The president could, on his own, restore federal overtime standards to where they were at their 1975 peak, covering the same 65 percent of salaried workers who were covered 40 years ago. If he did that, about 10.4 million Americans would suddenly be earning a lot more than they are now.
The results as Hanauer indicates, will....
...get the country back to the same equitable standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to raise the overtime threshold to $69,000. In other words, if you earn $69,000 or less, the law would require that you be paid overtime when you worked more than 40 hours a week. That’s 10.4 million middle-class Americans with more money in their pockets or more time to spend with friends and family.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
If you'd like to move the dial and improve the standard of living for millions in the U.S., please link to and sign the petition here
Increase Overtime Pay
