Extended Overtime

[Benton]

I know everybody's all worked up about where half a percent of us are going to go to the bathroom, but I figured I'd toss something else out there. It's really not a political issue, but I figure it'll head that way, sooooo...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/17/fact-sheet-growing-middle-class-paychecks-and-helping-working-families-0

Quote:Every week, millions of Americans work more than 40 hours a week but do not receive the overtime pay they have earned. Tomorrow, the Department of Labor will be finalizing a rule to fix that by updating overtime protections for workers. In total, the new rule is expected to extend overtime protections to 4.2 million more Americans who are not currently eligible under federal law, and it is expected to boost wages for workers by $12 billion over the next 10 years.

Quote:Yet over the past 40 years, overtime protections eroded as a result of inflation and lobbyists’ efforts to weaken them. The share of full-time workers qualifying for overtime based on their salaries has plummeted from 62 percent in 1975 to 7 percent today—even though the protections are more important than ever. Parents now have more demands on their time, with all parents working in more than six out of ten households with children. And despite a recent acceleration in wage growth and businesses adding 14.6 million jobs over a record 74 straight months of job growth, most Americans have seen relatively stagnant wages for the past few decades.

That’s why tomorrow, the Department of Labor is finalizing a rule to update overtime protections so they can help millions more Americans. The final rule, which takes effect on December 1, 2016, doubles the salary threshold—from $23,660 to $47,476 per year—under which most salaried workers are guaranteed overtime (hourly workers are generally guaranteed overtime pay regardless of their earnings level). Additionally, this new level will be automatically updated every three years to ensure that workers continue to earn the pay they deserve.

Quote:# Raise Americans’ wages by an estimated $12 billion over the next 10 years, with an average increase of $1.2 billion annually. At the same time, employers retain considerable flexibility in how they comply with the new rule, such as increasing salaries to at least the new threshold to keep positions that are primarily executive, administrative, or professional exempt from overtime pay; paying overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 in a week; or reducing overtime hours.

# Extend overtime protections to 4.2 million additional workers who are not currently eligible for overtime under federal law. Others who may already be eligible for overtime will also benefit as the higher salary threshold will serve as a useful bright line test for workers—and their employers—to understand whether they are eligible for overtime. The number of workers in each state who will benefit from the rule can be found HERE.

# Update the salary threshold every three years. The updates will ensure the threshold is maintained at the 40th percentile of full-time salaried workers in the lowest income region of the country. Based on projections of wage growth, the threshold is expected to rise to more than $51,000 with the first update on January 1, 2020.

# Raise the “highly compensated employee” threshold – from $100,000 to $134,004 – above which only a minimal showing is needed to demonstrate an employee is not eligible for overtime. This upper threshold was designed to ease the burden on employers in identifying overtime eligible employees since it is more likely that workers earning above this high salary level perform the types of job duties that would exempt them from overtime requirements.

# Respond to employers’ concerns by making no changes to the “duties test” and allowing bonuses and incentive payments to count toward up to 10 percent of the new salary level. Workers earning more than the salary threshold are still subject to the duties test to determine eligibility for overtime. In their comments to the proposed rule, employers argued that changing the duties test would be difficult and costly to implement, and the final rule leaves the existing duties test in place. Additionally, for the first time, employers will be able to count bonuses and commissions toward as much as 10 percent of the salary threshold.

Thoughts?

Personally, I'm thinking it mostly gets delegislated after the election, especially the salaries increase (but allowing salaried employee bonuses to count will probably stick).