Salaried workers who work lengthy hours for low pay aren’t discovering a lot sympathy amongst Republicans on Capitol Hill.
GOP lawmakers filed a decision in Congress on Wednesday that may block the Labor Division from extending extra time protections to tens of millions of salaried staff, a key office reform pursued by President Joe Biden.
Underneath federal regulation, solely sure staff have a proper to time-and-a-half pay once they work greater than 40 hours in per week. At present, salaried staff should earn lower than $35,568 per yr to be routinely entitled to the extra time pay.
A brand new rule from the Labor Division, finalized in April, would increase that wage threshold to $58,656 per yr, bringing an estimated 4 million further staff beneath the regulation’s safety. Employers would then need to pay these staff a premium once they work further hours, whereas now they don’t need to pay them something in any respect for that point.
“The Labor Department estimates Biden’s reform would transfer $1.5 billion a year from employers to employees in the form of higher wages.”
However the GOP lawmakers have filed what’s often known as a “resolution of disapproval” beneath the Congressional Assessment Act, which, if handed and signed into regulation, would nullify the reform.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) sponsored the decision within the GOP-controlled Home. Forty Republican colleagues have joined him as co-sponsors as of Friday. No Democrats have signed on to the laws.
GOP Sen. Mike Braun (Ind.) is main the companion laws within the Senate, the place Democrats maintain a threadbare majority.
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Republicans have used the Congressional Assessment Act to kill progressive reforms earlier than, most notably on the finish of Barack Obama’s presidency.
This specific effort has slim possibilities of succeeding, because the laws would face a Biden veto menace if it managed to move each chambers. And whatever the maneuvers in Washington, Biden’s extra time reforms face the opportunity of being blocked in federal court docket. However the decision nonetheless helps present the place each events stand on a key financial challenge — employee pay — in an election yr.
Business teams have come out strongly towards Biden’s extra time rule and have opposed related reforms for years, claiming they’d power employers to chop jobs. However giving extra workers extra time protections is standard amongst voters, very similar to the concept of elevating the minimal wage.
The Labor Division estimates the reform would switch $1.5 billion a yr from employers to workers within the type of greater wages. The advantages would go disproportionately to staff who’re girls and folks of colour, in response to an evaluation from the Financial Coverage Institute, a left-leaning assume tank.
“Giving more employees overtime protections is popular among voters, much like the idea of raising the minimum wage.”
However Walberg referred to as the extra time adjustments “burdensome” in a assertion and claimed it will result in inflation.
“Small businesses, nonprofits, and colleges across America will now be looking at bottom lines, and then make the tough decisions to lay off valuable staff or force salaried workers into hourly positions,” he mentioned.
Braun argued that extra time choices must be left to the bosses. “If the free market sets the price of labor, opportunity and prosperity are the result,” he mentioned.
Additional time protections within the U.S. stretch again to the Nice Melancholy, when the suitable to time-and-a-half pay was first enshrined in regulation. The concept was to forestall employers from overworking their workers, and to unfold extra work round throughout a time of excessive unemployment. If an organization must pay a premium to work somebody extra time, the pondering went, then the employer would possibly select to rent one other employee to cowl the extra hours.
However the regulation has gone lengthy stretches with out being up to date, and so fewer workers as a share of the broader workforce now get pleasure from extra time rights in contrast with a long time in the past.
The Labor Division mentioned when it introduced the proposed reforms that it was making an attempt to rectify “outdated and out-of-sync rules” that go away many low-paid salaried workers — retail retailer managers particularly — working numerous further hours with nothing to point out for it.
