The Labor Department Wednesday proposed providing overtime pay protections to workers making less than $55,068 a year, up nearly 55 percent from the current limit, as the department seeks to make it more costly for employers to avoid overtime by giving workers management duties.
Raising the salary that workers must earn to be considered exempt from federal overtime requirements would extend the protections to 3.6 million more workers, according to the department. The proposal could also be tested by a lawsuit, as a similar effort by the Obama administration was before it was rescinded by the Trump administration.
“For over 80 years, a cornerstone of workers’ rights in this country is the right to a 40-hour workweek, the promise that you get to go home after 40 hours or you get higher pay for each extra hour that you spend laboring away from your loved ones,” acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a statement. “I’ve heard from workers again and again about working long hours, for no extra pay, all while earning low salaries that don’t come anywhere close to compensating them for their sacrifices.”
Employees who make at least $35,568 a year and meet certain parameters based on their job duties aren’t currently required to receive time-and-a-half pay if they work more than 40 hours in a week. The proposal wouldn’t change eligibility requirements based on job duties.
The proposal would also automatically update the salary threshold every three years to ensure it pegged to earnings for nonhourly workers in the lowest wage region. It would also restore the overtime salary threshold to U.S. territories after the protections were removed in 2019.
The proposal is the most significant one to come out of the department since Su took over as acting Labor secretary in March. President Joe Biden nominated Su in February to be Labor secretary, but her confirmation remains in limbo in the Senate after Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., a key swing vote, said he would oppose her confirmation.
House Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., criticized the proposal.
“Biden’s DOL has proposed an overtime rule that is misguided and partisan,” Foxx said in a statement. “This rule will stifle workplace flexibility, lump burdensome costs on job creators, and ultimately hold back the very people DOL should be supporting the most—working Americans.”
Ranking member Robert C. Scott, D-Va., said the rule protects workers putting in 50- to 60-hour weeks without getting overtime.
“By increasing the salary threshold to qualify for overtime pay, the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed rule addresses this problem and provides millions more Americans with the right to overtime protections,” Scott said in a statement. “This means more dollars in the pockets of workers who are asked to work long hours, enabling them to better provide for themselves and their families.
“This proposed rule is good for workers, good for businesses, and good for our economy,” he said.
The proposal revives and would surpass an Obama administration effort to substantially increase the salary threshold for employees exempt from overtime. The Labor Department raised the threshold to $47,892 a year from $23,360 in 2016, but a federal judge stopped the rule from taking effect.
The Trump administration rescinded the rule before an appeals court weighed in on the ruling, and issued its own rule in 2019 increasing the threshold by a smaller amount to its current level.
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