Congress Realizes New Overtime Rules Stink

Last summer the Department of Labor released a new proposal for a change in overtime laws. Significantly, regardless of job duties, employees will have to earn $50,440 per year before they can be considered exemptfrom overtime. The change hasn’t been implemented yet (the proposed date is September 2016), but business owners are already in a panic.

Why? The previous threshold was only $23,660, so this throws a lot of jobs–an estimated five million, in fact–into the pot. This is a huge deal and will cause lots of problems for business owners and employees alike. Guess who just figured it out?

Congress. And boy, are they not happy. Walter Olson, atOverlawyered, pointed me toward statements by some congressmen that they are panicked about the new rule.

For example, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla) says, “We don’t have a set-hour kind of situation here; some kids work 12, 14, 16 hours a day, weekends, and I feel terrible that I cannot afford to give raises to the staff.”

Rep. Hastings, I’m sitting here crying buckets of tears for you. Buckets, I tell you. He continued, “I don’t see how we could pay overtime” for the “17 or 18 people that each of us is allowed to have–that’s problematic for me.”

To keep reading, click here: Congress Realizes New Overtime Rules Stink

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15 thoughts on “Congress Realizes New Overtime Rules Stink

  1. I find it perversely amusing that members of Congress find enough work to have people (kids?!) work 12, 14, 16 hours a day but cannot locate additional money, staff, or efficiencies. The business community seems to be very similar to Congress in that regard.

    Honestly they knew this was coming with the average work week for salaried professionals hitting 47 hours (and climbing barring any changes).

  2. Are we forgetting this same situation happened in 2004 when they nearly tripled the exempt salary requirement?  I’m sure some businesses struggled, and some even closed, but the business world did not go under. I don’t think it should be raised to 50K, but what about increasing the minimum salary to 35K?  Surely that wouldn’t be as large of a burden. 

  3. I think it’s short sighted to say they outright stick. We absolutely need a change because there are people classified as exempt for no other reason than a business wants to not have to pay them overtime even though they should. The salary requirement does need to be raised. Maybe not to 50K but at least 35-40. Something has to be done to stop the abuse of workers, especially in the fast food and retail sectors. Free market won’t just fix this one, it’s only made it worse.

    1. It’s become ridiculous. Just read on another board about a man who is salaried whose boss now expects him to work 102 hours a week. Technically he’s still above minimum wage so it’s legal. It shouldn’t be legal. Something has to be done.

  4. Pathetic. For Congressmen/women, you have a good deal going on. If you need to pay overtime, pay it out of your own salary. I have no sympathy. Why did they pass the law if they didn’t read it? Maybe we need to protect employees from employees who abuse them.

    1. I agree employees need protection from abusive employers. Sadly, protection often comes in the form of law because employers refuse to reasonably self-regulate and employers rebel against the restrictions. I think honest and fair employers won’t complain. Rather, it is the onerous employers who require exhaustive amounts of hours beyond 40 a week without additional compensation who will cry. Prime example: Congress!

  5. Ha ha ha, this article is hilarious; I shared it with my network.

    “Wait a minute, all of the regulations we put on businesses everywhere are onerous?! I was sure it was a good idea at the time! Maybe everyone but me should have to follow it? I’m clearly far too important.”

  6. Doesn’t matter which major party holds the majority in Congress, they are all often guilty of Ready…Fire…Aim actions. If it was up to me, I’d measure Congress in part not by the number of laws it creates, but by the number of laws it votes to discard.

  7. The idea of “I’ll work for less to get ahead” has been worked to death, pun intended. No, if you want to get ahead you need to have the ability to get paid a living wage at the same time. The whimsical idea that now poor young folks now won’t be able to get ahead in their careers is laughable. The Congress people and the companies will have to rearrange their OWN compensation (maybe) but they’ll still hire someone to do the lower-level work.The only people who could reasonably work those kinds of hours for that kind of pay and call it “getting ahead” have a family supporting them.

  8. Not paying overtime creates inefficiencies. Why streamline, plan or try to do things better when there’s no need to? If anyone ever has had the pleasure of working in a culture that didn’t believe in massive overtime you will see just how smart and resourceful humans can be. We accomplished twice the work with half the people. Companies that don’t care about the time of their salaried staff wind up hiring more people than necessary. There’s no cost savings.

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