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Originally posted by j8ear
Thanks...and with that:
* Workers who earn a salary of $65,000 or more would get no overtime pay regardless of their job duties.
Agree
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At first blush, this looks like a reasonable thing - but imagine the worker in San Francisco, just as a f'r'instance. He may make $65,000 - but that doesn't mean he can afford to support himself in that city. Many folks can support themselves on that much - some cannot. There's a lot of circumstances, I think, where this stricture is not a good move - it's nothing more than pandering to the average.
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* Salaried workers who make more than $22,100 per year and perform work that is of “substantial importance” or requires high-level training would not be eligible for overtime pay.
This is the sticking point I guess? To me "substantial importance" or "high level training" means you should go find a job that pays more then 22k, AND should have no trouble doing so.
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Problem here is that there's nothing to stop a company from declaring someone's job "important" for arbitrary reasons. Imagine this: a floor manager at Wal-Mart has received some training on customer relations, some on basic management, etc. He doesn't make much, but his overtime covers most of his shortfall. If this rule were to pass, Wal-Mart could declare his job "substantially important" - and then
require him to work more than 40 hours per week, without paying him overtime. How can they require this, you ask? With the advent of "at-will" employment contracts, companies can release an employee for any reason or for no reason at all. Wal-Mart could quite easily make his job security a function of his willingness to work overtime for no extra pay - and there'd be nothing in the law to prevent it. I find that substantially unfair. You?
Overtime pay laws are, first and foremost, the guardians of the 40-hour work week. That's what the Administration is seeking to undo here.
Perhaps tangentially, I hesitate to bring any worker-compensation laws before our Congress right now - given that in this time of deficits and a poor economy, they've just voted themselves yet another pay raise. Cute, eh?