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Sun 5 Sep, 2004 08:47 pm
This Labor Day finds many workers in a state of anxiety over the overtime rules that became law on Aug. 23.
The worry is understandable, but unnecessary. Contrary to reports from many self-described worker advocates, the new overtime regulations (search) are unlikely to cost many employees their overtime pay.
Yet misperceptions abound. The day the new rules took effect, for example, Sen. Tom Harkin held a press conference outside of the Department of Labor's offices in Washington, D.C. Harkin passed along a story from the Aug. 11 Chicago Sun-Times reporting that, as a result of the new rules, 2,000 employees of Sears Roebuck and Co. had been reclassified and were no longer entitled to overtime pay.
But the Sun-Times story was wrong. In fact, the paper already had printed a correction (on the 13th) and announced that 2,000 employees of the department-store chain were about to begin receiving overtime pay under the new regulations. Oops.
Sen. Harkin and the newspaper both can be forgiven. So much confusion surrounds the new rules that it would be easy to assume that whenever jobs are "reclassified" in terms of overtime eligibility, it must mean workers are losing overtime pay, rather than gaining it.
But as the rules are applied in workplace after workplace, a pattern is developing: Employers initially intimidated by the 15 pages of carefully worded rules find that little has changed. And employees find that they and their co-workers are still entitled to time-and-a-half pay whenever they work more than 40 hours a week.
The misplaced concerns about the overtime rules can be traced to a report by the pro-union Economic Policy Institute (search), which estimated that six million workers would lose statutory overtime protection under the new rules. This report drew much attention before the new rules took effect, but since then nearly every employer who has applied the new rules has found either no changes, or found workers who gained overtime.
Among the many examples: A spokesman for Franks Nursery and Crafts, a retail chain based in Troy, Mich., noted in Crain's Detroit Business magazine that they were not affected. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas announced that none of their 1,850 workers would lose or gain overtime rights under the new rules.
Office Depot, headquartered in Delray Beach, Fla., announced that they expect no changes. Reimbursement Technologies, a medical billing company in Conshohocken, Pa., found that 40 of their employees would gain overtime and none would lose it, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. And, of course, the 2,000 Sears Roebuck and Co. employees will be gaining, not losing, overtime pay.
Expect this trend to continue. There will be a few workers who lose a legal right to overtime pay (though new rules for those earning more than $100,000 annually will mean that highly paid workers are more likely to be considered exempt). Meanwhile the minimum salary needed to qualify for an exemption increased from $8,060 to $23,660, an increase that will result in 1.3 million workers gaining a legal right to time-and-a-half pay for overtime.
The new rules also add details and updates for new industries and occupations that have grown up over the last half-century. The last thorough review of these rules was 50 years ago, and many of their harshest critics admit that the overhaul was long overdue. But the new details that were added were frequently based on prior court cases or Department of Labor's own practices, meaning little was really changed. Up-to-date rules will mean that both employers and employees will find it easier to tell who gets overtime, reducing the risk that either will be forced into costly and time-consuming lawsuits.
Many workers will be worried about overtime this Labor Day, but over the next few months, as employers work through the new overtime rules, those worries should dissipate. The far greater concern for workers, one that should become more pressing as worries over overtime recede, is whether or not their interests are well served by organizations and politicians prone to overreact to a fair and long overdue revision of an important labor law.
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It would seem that this law has done more good then harm. I guess that is what happens when people see who passes a law instead of looking at what the law is really about.
My overtime rules didn't change, did anyone else's? It will also be interesting to see how many of you now get OT that didn't before.
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New York Times editorial
Saving Time-and-a-Half
Published: August 25, 2004
There is no doubt the nature of America's work force has changed a great deal since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, but the Bush administration has cynically relied on this fact to overhaul the law's overtime provisions in a manner most likely to hurt millions of Americans. At a time of stagnant wages and a weak labor market - when workers need more security, not less - fewer people are likely to receive overtime pay when they put in more than 40 hours a week on the job.
That is because new rules that went into effect this week take an expansive view of the nation's managerial class, which is ineligible for overtime pay. If you are a factory employee or a retail store supervisor who leads a small team of fellow workers, for instance, the new rules deny you overtime if you can merely recommend - not carry out - the hiring and firing of employees.
Business groups want the new rules because they say they need to cut down on the litigation-inducing uncertainty of who is eligible for overtime. But the Bush administration could have provided more clarity without necessarily stacking the deck against working Americans. The administration goes so far as to say that its changes will expand the pool of people eligible for overtime, but research by liberal and labor advocates persuasively argue that the changes would cut the number, by as many as 6 million.
The administration should have held off until the true impact of its rules could have been ascertained. But then, the White House haste might have stemmed from its desire to shield major companies from litigation. Of late, several have been hammered by a barrage of lawsuits demanding unpaid overtime, including a $90 million verdict against Farmers Insurance Exchange and multimillion settlements by Rite Aid, Bank of America and Radio Shack.
Groups differ on impact of overtime rules
Posted: Monday, August 23, 7:50am EDT
Paychecks could surge or shrink for a few or for millions of workers across the country starting Monday, when sweeping changes to the nation's overtime pay rules take effect. There is little agreement by the Bush administration, employer groups, labor experts and others on how many workers will gain or lose the right to overtime pay under the new rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
"To be candid, no one knows," said Jerry Hunter, a labor lawyer at Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis and former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board during the first Bush administration.
Employers have sought changes for decades, complaining the regulations were ambiguous and out of date, and questioning why highly paid professionals should get overtime pay. Labor unions, however, say the new rules are intended to reduce employers' costs by cutting the number workers who are eligible for overtime pay.
Estimates of how many workers will lose their overtime eligibility range from 107,000 to 6 million. Workers who could become newly eligible range from very few to 1.3 million.
"Not only is the Labor Department unsure, but a lot of people in a lot of industries are unsure," Hunter said. "This is all very fluid right now."
The major overhaul, the first in more than half a century, is aimed at mostly white-collar workers. The Labor Department says manual laborers and other blue-collar workers will not be affected.
The new rules are intended to limit workers' multimillion-dollar lawsuits, many of them successful, claiming they were cheated out of overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
au1929 wrote:Groups differ on impact of overtime rules
Posted: Monday, August 23, 7:50am EDT
Paychecks could surge or shrink for a few or for millions of workers across the country starting Monday, when sweeping changes to the nation's overtime pay rules take effect. There is little agreement by the Bush administration, employer groups, labor experts and others on how many workers will gain or lose the right to overtime pay under the new rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
"To be candid, no one knows," said Jerry Hunter, a labor lawyer at Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis and former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board during the first Bush administration.
Employers have sought changes for decades, complaining the regulations were ambiguous and out of date, and questioning why highly paid professionals should get overtime pay. Labor unions, however, say the new rules are intended to reduce employers' costs by cutting the number workers who are eligible for overtime pay.
Estimates of how many workers will lose their overtime eligibility range from 107,000 to 6 million. Workers who could become newly eligible range from very few to 1.3 million.
"Not only is the Labor Department unsure, but a lot of people in a lot of industries are unsure," Hunter said. "This is all very fluid right now."
The major overhaul, the first in more than half a century, is aimed at mostly white-collar workers. The Labor Department says manual laborers and other blue-collar workers will not be affected.
The new rules are intended to limit workers' multimillion-dollar lawsuits, many of them successful, claiming they were cheated out of overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
Do you have any current info on the hoax, such as those that I posted? You are posting old info that didn't have all the facts at the time. A labor lawyer in your second article even said they didn't know the full extent of the change and how it would affect people. In the article I listed they were showing that people that weren't covered before are now covered. I would say according what I posted it is having a positive effect.
That is correct there is not enough history to make a determination regarding who will benefit and who will be hurt.
Only time will tell.
au1929 wrote:That is correct there is not enough history to make a determination regarding who will benefit and who will be hurt.
Only time will tell.
Well we can only guess that Bush did the right thing on the OT issue. With more people being covered under the new law that is a W in the win column.
One hundred and some-odd years ago, the immigrant laborers that were worked to death to provide for the Robber Barons started to organize and UNITE in common cause.
They fought for and obtained such incredible things as no manacles in factories, a forty-hour(5 day) workweek, and wages that weren't merely "subsistence" level.
The new developments cut into Baronial profits, and the construction of "Summer Cottages" in Newport plummeted.
But now the Barons have united in common cause...
Care to state how the work conditions of today relate to those of the early 1900's?
As stated, all we have seen from the media is that more people are being covered by the new rules, not lossing OT pay.
Magus
Magus, APPLAUSE!
BBB
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Magus, APPLAUSE!
BBB
Why is it no one can refute this? I'm begining to think your all full of poop, and can't prove it wrong.
The function of every political-economic system is to co-ordinate the productivity of its members to create prosperity... and to distribute the wealth that is created.
When the distribution of wealth is co-opted so that some members exploit while others are exploited, inequities result.
Therein are sown the seeds of conflict and enmity.
Since government is based upon the consent of the governed, this is NOT a good thing.
It is the route to anarchy and dissolution.
Overtime Rules
By JIM ABRAMS, AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 10) -- A House vote to overturn new Bush administration rules on which workers qualify for overtime pay was hailed by Democrats trying to convince undecided voters they are the party that better protects worker rights.
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20040909163809990002
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