Governor Wolf: Continue to Stand With PA Workers and Protect the New Overtime Regulations!

Pennsylvania’s legislative majority buried the elimination of a new PA regulation inside a code bill that passed with the state budget last Friday, June 25. The regulation they are seeking to eliminate is a recently-passed and highly-celebrated regulation that would restore the 40 hour work week and strengthen overtime protections for 190,000 lower-paid PA workers.

We urgently need people to contact the Governor's office and ask him to VETO the administrative code that would repeal these incredibly important protections for Pennsylvania workers.

Over the past several years, as Governor Wolf sought to restore the 40-hour work week for exploited, hard-working salaried workers, the legislative majority repeatedly sought to block his efforts, but the governor stood firm. He needs to stand firm one last time, so that more of Pennsylvania’s exploited assistant managers in fast food, retail, branch banking, doctors’ offices, universities and other non-profits, construction, manufacturing, and other industries finally get either a 40-hour week and time with family or fair pay when they work longer hours!

Salaried workers would begin to benefit when the PA threshold increases above the federal threshold in just three months—October 3, 2021 - but only if Governor Wolf vetoes this administration code!

Use this letter writing tool to take action now!


More background info:

When the United States and Pennsylvania first established overtime pay, and the 40-hour week, lawmakers recognized that lower-paid salaried workers needed to receive overtime pay. Otherwise, employers could just relabel hourly workers as salaried. At one point 70% of U.S. salaried workers automatically received overtime pay because they were below the salary threshold established to indicate which salaried employees automatically get overtime. But in the 1970s, Congress and the Pennsylvania legislature stopped increasing the salaried threshold. While President Biden is expected to attempt to increase the federal threshold, that won’t happen by October 3 and there’s no guarantee that federal courts won’t derail a federal increase as they did one enacted at the end of President Obama’s term. Having more states enact increases would strengthen the case for a federal increase, including with the courts. Pennsylvania undoing the recently enacted regulatory increase will set back the effort to achieve a national increase.