At least 6 million workers will lose their right to overtime pay under final Bush administration rules scheduled to take effect Aug. 23, according to a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis released July 14—one day after former high-ranking Labor Department officials reported that the new overtime rules will substantially erode the overtime rights of America’s workers.
“It’s hard to take the administration’s claims of wanting to help workers seriously, when those who will lose outnumber those who will be helped by 16 to one,” says EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey, author of the report Longer Hours, Less Pay.
The Bush administration’s changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) would establish new rules for employers to determine if workers are eligible for overtime pay. When the proposed rules were announced last year, the Bush administration claimed it was streamlining the overtime regulations and expanding the number of workers eligible for overtime pay. But workers, their unions and other groups charged the move would deny millions of workers their overtime pay.
Under the new rules, workers who earn as little as $23,660 per year—about $5,000 above the poverty line for a family of four—could see their jobs reclassified as ineligible for overtime pay.
The rules changes will affect workers throughout the economy. For example, as many as 2 million administrative workers will lose their overtime rights under a rule change that makes “team leaders” ineligible for overtime pay, even when they do not supervise others on the team, the EPI report says.
The new rules also will end overtime eligibility for some 900,000 workers without college or graduate degrees who will be newly classified as exempt professionals—nearly 1.4 million workers reclassified as executives under the new rules, another 130,000 chefs, sous chefs and cooks, 160,000 financial services workers and 117,000 teachers and computer programmers—according to EPI.
The EPI report came on the same day House Democrats renewed their efforts to protect overtime pay. The House Appropriations subcommittee, on a party-line vote July 14, defeated 31–29 an amendment that would have required the U.S. Labor Department to implement the old overtime rules but with the new adjusted minimum salary levels. In this way, workers would be guaranteed that they would not lose overtime eligibility. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), who sponsored the amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill, is expected to offer the amendment again on the House floor next week. A similar amendment was narrowly defeated last year in the House.
Former Labor Officials Say Bush Overtime Pay Take-Away Will Hurt Working Families
The EPI analysis comes a day after a new report by former Department of Labor officials, which finds the Bush administration’s overtime pay take-away will harm working families and take overtime pay from “large numbers” of workers.
The three authors of the report released July 13 held high-level positions at the Department of Labor under both Republicans and Democrats beginning in the 1980s under President Reagan. All three dealt extensively with the FLSA and wage and hour issues during their government service.
The independent experts conclude that “...implementation of these new regulations will harm rather than promote and protect the interests of U.S. workers and their families.”
Stop the Bush overtime pay take-away.
Posted by UFCW 227 at July 17, 2004 04:59 PM