We should clarify what these overtime rules mean. I'm drawing on the Seattle Times (
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...vertime11.html) and the Dayton Business Journal (
http://columbus.bizjournals.com/colu...ditorial1.html) for two different looks at said overtime laws. First, the proposed major changes:
- Salaried employees making less than $425 a week, or $22,100 a year, automatically would qualify for overtime, up from $155 a week, or $8,060 annually, previously.
- Workers who make $65,000 or more a year and performed any of the revised list of duties would be exempt from overtime pay.
In other words, what the law was supposed to do was to ensure more low-wage Americans and less high-wage (typically salaried) workers received overtime. The idea is working on the perception that businesses paid already high-paid, salaried managers and white-collar employees overtime, essentially passing over the low-paid employees. Thus, businesses take what they would have paid one or two (already high-paid, salaried) managers' overtime and give them to four or five hourly workers. It doesn't seem so unreasonable.
Speaking from someone who made more than $8,060 but less than $22,100 not so long ago, I would have loved to have this law in place. It's ridiculous that only people who make less than $155 a week automatically qualify for overtime.
One other major point of contention that also needs to be clarified is how many workers will be affected. The Labor Department says 644,000 and the "Economic Policy Institute" says 8 million. The differences are as follows:
Labor Department: "What the Labor Department got is a snapshot of the average number of Americans paid overtime in a particular week and an estimate of how many wouldn't qualify if the rules were changed."
EPI: "The Economic Policy Institute asked, 'How many workers are eligible for overtime who wouldn't be eligible under the changes?'"
We see now how we get the difference in numbers. The Labor Department measures how many people working overtime would directly be affected. The EPI measured how many people could
possibly be affected, regardless of whether or not they work overtime. Likely, the real number is somewhere in between, but probably closer to the Labor Department's number, as there are many people out there eligible for overtime that don't work it, either because they don't have to or they don't want to.
Counting those people is somewhat dishonest and artifically inflates the numbers; it would be like the Labor Department countering by saying that every worker making between $8,000 and $21,000 would benefit from the new overtime law. (The Labor Department says at least 1.3 million would benefit; according to the Census 20% of American households make less than $17,916.)
-- Alvin
EDIT: Grammar, "Business" changed to "Businesses" in the second paragraph.