Biden Expanded Overtime Guarantees For Millions of Salaried Workers

 

Late in his second term, Barack Obama oversaw a regulation that called for workers to become automatically entitled to time-and-a-half overtime pay, making up to $47,476. The move infuriated both businesses and Republicans, who sought to block the rule in both Congress and the courts. The 2016 election of Orange Julius Caesar and a Texas judge’s ruling in the same year led the Labor Department to revisit the matter, setting a significantly lower threshold of $35,568.

Under President Biden’s Department of Labor, the issue was reopened, and a rule was proposed at the end of August pushing that cutoff up by nearly $20,000 — to $55,000. The draft regulation, which still needs to be finalized, would also include a mechanism to adjust that level every three years by yoking it to the 35th percentile of annual income.

According to the Labor Department, the proposed rule would pave the way for roughly 3.6 million additional workers to be eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay than were eligible under the 2019 policy. The acting Secretary said, “Too often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. That is unacceptable.”

It stands to be one of the most concrete policies to boost workers’ wages under Biden’s term, as other ambitious proposals like raising the minimum wage have been bottled up in Congress.

The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the rule in April, but the agency will have to figure out a way to defend it against legal arguments similar to the ones that stymied the similar Obama rule. Additionally, any internal delays could expose the regulation to being later overturned by lawmakers using the Congressional Review Act, a tool that was successfully used in recent years to undo rules issued under both Obama and Trump.
References:
BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION FINALIZES RULE TO INCREASE COMPENSATION THRESHOLDS FOR OVERTIME ELIGIBILITY, EXPANDING PROTECTIONS FOR MILLIONS OF WORKERS. Retrieved June 3, 2024 from https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20240423-0#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Biden%2DHarris%20administration,employee%20from%20federal%20overtime%20pay
30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed. Retrieved June 3, 2024 from https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046