Thread: Obama Proposes Major Overtime Pay Expansion, GOP Resists

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Obama proposes major overtime pay expansion, amid GOP resistance

Published June 29, 2015FoxNews.com

WASHINGTON – President Obama unveiled a long-awaited plan to drastically expand the number of people eligible for overtime pay, in a move that he said would ensure "hard work is rewarded" -- but that critics warn could hurt job growth at a fragile time.

Under the proposal unveiled late Monday, salaried workers who earn nearly $1,000 per week would become eligible for overtime pay.

The rule from the Labor Department would more than double the threshold at which employers can avoid paying overtime, from the current $455 a week to $970 a week by next year. That would mean salaried employees earning less than $50,440 a year would be assured overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week, up from the current $23,660 a year.

"We've got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded," Obama wrote in an op-ed in The Huffington Post. "That's how America should do business. In this country, a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay."
Although the Labor Department's estimates suggest the proposal would raise wages for 5 million people, other estimates are far higher. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, recently estimated that a threshold of $984 a week would cover 15 million people.

"This is by definition middle-class people. This reverses decades of neglect," said EPI President Larry Mishel.
Under the current threshold, only about 8 percent of salaried workers are eligible for 11/2 times their regular pay when they work overtime. The EPI estimates that doubling the salary level would make up to 40 percent of salaried workers eligible.

Yet many Republicans have opposed Obama's plans to increase the threshold, arguing that doing so would discourage companies from creating jobs and dampen economic growth. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who chairs the Senate's labor panel, has derided the idea as designed "to make it as unappealing as possible" for companies to create jobs.

To keep up with future inflation and wage growth, the proposal will peg the salary threshold at the 40th percentile of income, individuals familiar with the plan said.

The president was to promote the proposal during a visit Thursday to La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Obama's proposal aims to narrow a loophole that the president has long said some employers exploit to avoid paying overtime.

Employees who make above the salary threshold can be denied overtime if they are deemed managers. Some work grueling schedules at fast food chains and retail stores, but with no overtime eligibility, their pay may be lower per hour than many workers they supervise.

The existing salary cap, established in 2004 under President George W. Bush, has been eroded by inflation. Obama has long charged that the level is too low and undercuts the intent of the overtime law.

The proposed changes will be open for public comment and could take months to finalize. They can be enacted through regulation, without approval by the Republican-led Congress.

Obama, in his op-ed, argued the exemption was intended for highly paid, white-collar employees but now punished lower-income workers because the government has failed to update the regulations.

The beneficiaries would be people like Brittany Swa, 30, a former manager of a Chipotle restaurant in Denver. As a management trainee, she started as an entry-level crew member in March 2010. After several months she began working as an "apprentice," which required a minimum 50-hour work week.

Yet her duties changed little. She had a key to the shop and could make bank deposits, but otherwise spent nearly all her time preparing orders and working the cash register. She frequently worked 60 hours a week but didn't get overtime because she earned $36,000.

The grueling hours continued after she was promoted to store manager in October 2010. She left two years later and has joined a class-action lawsuit against Chipotle, charging that apprentices shouldn't be classified as managers exempt from overtime. A spokesman for Chipotle declined to comment on the case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

GOP, what is wrong with you? Bush II did a stupid thing because of that galactically stupid Elaine Chao, married to the equally galactically stupid Mitch McConnell by this change to automatic overtime pay.

You can not rely upon the deeds of family of traitors who have sold off our industries through free trade treason agreements, put millions of Americans out of work through illegal immigration, and deflated our wages and salaries through excess legal immigration and expect to win the hearts and minds of the American People, let alone display that you want to cheat them on overtime pay.

You should have come up with this idea before Obama did, and moreover you should have never approved this salary cap to begin with.

You want to call yourselves "conservatives", when you aren't fiscal conservatives, just social conservatives. A fiscal conservative knows that when Americans are cornered into unemployment, underemployment and cheated on their overtime, the income gap grows, and when the income gap grows, so does poverty, so does poverty spending, and so does the national debt.

Don't you know that it was Republicans who started the whole work week and overtime pay idea starting with Martin Van Buren and then Herbert Hoover? Fighting for our workers, standing up for them, using our right to regulate employers and commerce, to shorten hours, increase pay, improve working conditions, these were our ideals, our goals, our mission.

Some of you today bring total shame upon our party for the absolutely idiotic positions you take and boy oh boy is this one of them.

I totally support increasing the salary cap for over-time pay. I just wish Republicans would have never capped it to begin with and had corrected this grave error before Obama has decided to do so. But good for him. I'm sure he's not doing it to improve the lot of Americans, just the illegal aliens and immigrants he's handing work permits out to faster than we can count them.

Trump needs to weigh in on this and I hope and pray would support it.