Posted on 08/12/2015 4:45:25 PM PDT by DBCJR
On July 6th, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with the potential to affect an untold number of employers. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register at 80 FR 38515, drastically changes the DOL’s interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to overtime exemptions. The current rule, put in place in 2004, exempts employees with salaries of at least $455 a week ($23,660 a year) and who perform executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer duties from overtime regulations.
In a Presidential Memorandum in March of 2014, President Obama directed the DOL to update the overtime exemption regulations concerning both the salary requirements and job classifications. The proposed rule would raise the salary exemption level to the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried workers as well as seek comment on how to change and adapt the “standard duties test” to determine which employees are eligible for the exemption. Using 2013 data, the salary exemption figure would be $921 per week ($47,892 per year). The DOL estimates that this figure will rise to $970 a week by 2016, the likely first year of the final rule. In addition, Highly Compensated Employees (“HCE”) – those who make over $100,000 a year but less than $122, 148 – may be eligible for overtime if they meet the minimal HCE duties test but not a standard duties test.
The DOL estimates that 4.6 million workers and as many as 36,000 HCE workers will be newly qualified for overtime in the first year of this new rule, and the average annualized direct employer costs would total around a quarter of a billion dollars per year.
The comment period for the proposed rule ends on September 4, 2015, and a final rule will be issued sometime thereafter, taking effect 30-90 days from issuance. This means there is a high probability that the final rule will begin to effect employers as early as 2016, so employers should update their overtime policies and revisit employee classification as soon as possible to comply with the eventual rule.
Anybody who thinks businesses will just sit there and take it without developing a work around must be.....Democrats.
Zero writes a memo, and the law is effectively changed for the whole country.
We are, indeed, in a dictatorship.
Time-and-a-half after 20 hours! Whoo-hoo!
bump
socialism/fascism is just so much mandated fun.
one thing we have russians didn’t is that we’re not gonna turn in our damn guns.
Only getting 19.5 hours a week - Whoo-what?!
;’)
More jobs are going to be lost thanks to the Kenyan Child of the Earth. But hey! Barry has his! How are you doing?
The statutory provision establishing minimum wage and overtime exemptions for executive and other white collar employees, section 213 (a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, specifically authorizes the Secretary of Labor to define those employees subject to the exemption and to modify those definitions from time to time. So your beef here is with Congress, for writing laws which turn over legislative power to the executive branch.
Hmmmmm ..?? I wonder how many employers will be able to withstand that increase in pay ..??
This rule is outrageous.
And .. for all those employees now working 20/hr weeks; this rule could mean NO OVERTIME AT ALL. And the extra 20 hours per week they could work at regular time will no longer be available to them.
UNBELIEVABLE ..!!
If you want to encourage commercial growth .. this is NOT the way to do it.
But .. if anybody hasn’t figured it out yet .. this president and his admin are not in the encouraging growth mode .. they’re actually destroying as much commerce as possible.
After all, America is terrible and we don’t deserve all this prosperity. I don’t need the /s do I ..??
I suspect employers are making more low level administrative types salaried so that they can reduce their hourly staff. Why hire people that have to receive mandated insurance and may be making $15/hr soon when you can make one person salaried and work them 80 hours doing the jobs of 2-3 people to compensate.
Pfl
While I may not agree with how this is being done, I don’t think someone making less than $25000 should be excluded from the law.
How to Kill the Economy by Barry Obama.
This is such good news for the next POTUS. All you have to do is roll back regulation to 2007 levels and the economy will rev up.
My son and I were discussing this change over the weekend. One of the employees under his supervision is now going to have to keep track of his time and maintain a regular schedule. Really deflated the individual when he was told about the change. Son says he’s a great employee, enjoyed being part of the team, and always came in early and stayed late whenever anything needed to be completed without anyone telling him. Wouldn’t be surprised to see employee’s overall performance suffer or see him leave. Big difference to a lot of people between thinking you are part of the “management team” versus being just a “regular employee”. Businesses need some of both types but IMO Department of Labor should have no role in determining who falls in what category or what their rate of pay should be.
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