The proposal would “restore and extend overtime protections to low-paid salaried workers” who work more than 40 hours per week but are ineligible for customary overtime protections, such as receiving time and a half for their work, due to “outdated and out-of-sync rules,” the department said in a press release.
The Trump administration raised the salary threshold from $23,660 to $35,568. This is stated by the Labor Department.
According to the law, a salaried worker who earns more than the established minimum wage performs work in a “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity” and is not entitled to overtime compensation.
The idea calls for adjustments every three years based on wage data to “prevent a future erosion of overtime protections” and would also improve the identification of which executive and administrative personnel should be excluded.
For those working in U.S. territories who haven’t had overtime protections since 2019, they would also be reinstated, along with enforcement of the federal minimum wage of $3 million.
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Sector-Specific Benefits
According to the Department of Labor, many workers would benefit from the new regulation if it were to become law. The Labor Department also states that around 627,000 health care professionals, 320,000 manufacturing workers, 310,000 retail workers, and 202,000 educators may be qualified.
Former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh informed legislators in June 2021 that the agency was evaluating its overtime standards, but a variety of delays caused the deadline for a proposed rule to be this August, according to HR Dive.
President Joe Biden has already attempted to raise the eligibility bar for those receiving overtime pay when serving as vice president under former President Barack Obama. In 2016, Biden revealed the Obama administration’s intention to more than double the threshold, from around $23,000 to close to $47,500.
But legal challenges ultimately prevented that from happening, keeping the threshold at $23,000 until it was raised under former President Donald Trump in 2019. A Texas-based district court found that the threshold was “set so high it made the job duties piece of the exemption test irrelevant,” according to Bloomberg Law.
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Source: Forbes
