Update the Rules on Overtime Pay for Salaried Workers
U.S. Department of Labor
In July, the Department of Labor proposed an update to outdated overtime rules that could benefit millions of American workers who are now excluded from overtime pay.
The Department is now accepting public comments on the new rule. URA-AFT urges all our members and friends to participate in the democratic process. Speak up for the right to overtime pay. Tell your story. Whether your job is “No limit, no lunch, no life”, or whether overtime pay or compensatory time helped you balance your family and work life, this new rule can help make our work lives a little bit fairer. And we belive it is just the start, because further changes can be made to define what kind of work truly makes workers exempt from overtime.
What does the Obama administration's proposed overtime regulation do? It makes an inflation adjustment to the overtime salary threshold, which is used to determine eligibility for overtime pay.
How does the overtime salary threshold work? Workers who earn below the threshold are guaranteed overtime protection for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. Salaried workers above the threshold may or may not qualify for overtime, depending on job duties. So a higher threshold means more workers are guaranteed overtime protection and fewer workers can be denied overtime. The current overtime salary threshold is $455 per week, or $23,660 per year.
How high does the proposed regulation adjust the overtime salary threshold? The proposed regulation will increase the overtime salary threshold to $970 per week, or $50,440 per year, by 2016. We at URA-AFT believe it should be higher, at least $1,000 per week. In inflation-adjusted terms, this is roughly the same level as 1975. In other words, the proposed regulation restores overtime protections that have been lost to inflation since 1975. The Labor Department also proposes to index the threshold to keep overtime protections from being eroded in the future.
Please sign the petition and add any additional comments related to the topic.
Sponsored by
To:
U.S. Department of Labor
From:
[Your Name]
It is way past time to update the rules on overtime pay for salaried workers.
I respectfully urge you to:
· Adopt a minimum salary of $1,000 per week, effective this year. Anything lower does not reflect the realities of the regions where most of us live and work.
· Adopt an indexed minimum salary, to protect workers in the future.
· Expedite the salary minimum implementation. We cannot wait any longer for this update.
· Separately, carry out a review of the duties tests, including:
1) The primary duty test should require that an exempt worker spend at least half of her time doing solely exempt work.
2) The administrative exemptions tests for workers in schools and educational institutions should be revised to address higher education.
3) The supervisory exemption tests should be revised to require that supervisors demonstrate hire and fire authority over two or more subordinates to be exempted.