Obama appointed judge too, and the reasoning is rock solid. Once again, the administration ignored the law.
I think their hearts were in the right place though. Employers really abuse the exemptions in the law. But this is where competence matters, you have to do things the right way and too often this administration has not done things the right way.
Huh, the current rule has a salary threshold, so I’m not sure why that can’t be change. Maybe they eliminated the duty test? More digging needed. We just had an active thread on the topic; I recall some discussion there.
None of these is the one I was thinking of.
Administration adjusts overtime rules
WTF D.O.L.? Final Overtime Rules Effective December 1, 2016
New Overtime Rule
Reading the article, it sounds like the judge hasn’t overturned anything. He is only suspended the rules pending a formal hearing on the matter.
Duties are hard to pin down. Exactly what a salaried individual does over the course of a week or a day is hard to always describe. How much is managerial, how much is administrative, and how much is actual labor. By more than doubling the salary threshold, this ensures that employers will only have people that are fairly highly paid as managers, so it will be a bit harder to abuse them.
I thought the new guideline was a bit much myself. From 23k, which is too low, to 47k, which is hard to get to. I would have been happy with something in the 30’s, maybe with the understanding that it would go up again later, in a few more years.
I had to do a bit of restructuring in order to bring my shop up to the new code, which, now, apparently, I may not have had to. I know alot of people in food service management that still had not settled exactly how they were going to be transitioned, it did seem as though most thought that they would actually end up with less pay overall once they switched to hourly, so, even though they may continue to work some long hours, at least their pay won’t be cut.
Can we just make a law that says, “salary or no, nobody should make less than minimum wage”? The problem Obama was trying to solve (as far as I can tell) is McDonald’s calling a fry cook “assistant manager”, giving them an $18,000 salary, and making them work 80 hours a week. That comes out to $4.33 per hour.
Which makes the complaints against the new rules idiotic. “We can’t afford to pay our salaried workers an hourly wage” means that once you pay them hourly for the work they do, you can’t make that match up to their previous salary because previously they were making less than minimum wage. Otherwise, you take the salary, divide it by 52 weeks in a year, and 40 hours a week, and get the equivalent hourly wage. The only time that won’t work is when that number is less than minimum wage, and I don’t have any sympathy for those employers at all.
The old guideline was for 23k a year, but it would not be that uncommon for them to be working close to 80 a week. When I was in fast food management, it was a rare week that was under 70 hours, and that was for 26k.
The new rules, at 47k, would still let you work someone 80 hours a week, at over minimum wage, including OT.
Most salaried positions aren’t quite that abusive though. I have a manager that works 50 hours most weeks, though there are some busy weeks that he may put in close to 60. I was paying him about 32k for that, that works out to 11 or so an hour most weeks, still nearly 9 if he works 60. (that accounts for OT)
Rather than comply with he new rules, I actually did a restructure of my company, and made him a partner, now I don’t pay him anything at all (He takes a draw), it was either that, or lie on time sheets. Now a bit annoyed that I didn’t have to go through all of that…
The biggest thing is having a steady paycheck is good for the employee, and having a steady labor payout is good for the employer. Sometimes a manager needs to work few more hours one week than another, and rather than have those paychecks fluctuating all the time, salary is usually better for everyone involved.
Yeah, I earn a salary, I have nothing against it. I work 40 hours a week, and while sometimes I work 50 if necessary, it’s balanced by not having to use vacation days (or forgo wages) to go to the doctor or pick my kid up from school early. And I make almost six figures and I work at a computer.
Flipping burgers 70 hours a week at $26k (26,000/52/70=$7.14/hr not counting overtime, $5.88/hr if so) is a different story.
One example of this that I remember concerned a Dollar General store that offered a lady 36K per year to be the manager. She was ecstatic; she had never made around $17 an hour. Problem was they wouldn’t give her the resources to hire enough people to cover the store. She ended up working 80 hours a week to keep it going. So it turned out she was only making $8.50 an hour.
This law was made to protect the likes of her. All kinds of business organizations are against it as you would expect. I’m still waiting to hear some examples on how this is a bad law, other than cutting into their profits.
My mother in law manages a DG. She frequently works 100 hour weeks. For around $40k. And turnover at her store is outrageous. She often has to miss holidays and family events because the other keyholder at her store quit or had to be fired for gross incompetence. She gets no overtime pay, zero flexibility in her schedule, zero paid holidays, the responsibility of an executive and the pay of a cashier.
We are a nation governed by written laws … these laws need to be updated from time to time … however Congress is all but completely paralyzed … we really are getting to the point where these written laws are so outdated as to be complete unworkable …
I know very little of wage and overtime law … but these issues I’ve seen presented are so similar to the land management problems I’m kinda taking the step that both have the same cause …
The laws regulating B of LM’s lands are so outdated, so archaic, they are almost impossible to use … all the science learned these past 80 years isn’t reflected in the written laws … as soon as B of LM announces a timber lot is opened for bidding, a lawsuit is filed … 5 years later when those issues are resolved and B of LM opens the lot for bids, another lawsuit is filed … another 5 years the bids are collected, and another lawsuit is filed … etc etc etc …
The courts are managing the lands … trying to balance 42 different laws that Congress seems incapable of clarifying … just nuts to do business this way … the alternative is to have the President use his/her executive power to basically rewrite the laws … but there are those who say the President isn’t allowed to rewrite the laws … so once again, it’s up to the courts to decide …
… and we all know how much screaming there is when the courts try to rewrite laws …
It wasn’t a law. Which branch of government creates the law under the Constitution?
There should be a fix for that sort of abuse of the salary system.
Maybe there should be a law.
But the Department of Labor changed the rules without the benefit of a law in this case.
You could put in an hours cap, but then that cap would be the defacto number of hours that a salaried person would be working.
Make it too low, and it’s not worth having a salaried person around anymore, too high, and it may not be worth their time.
Yes, I’m confused by the judge’s ruling, but you’re not quite capturing his argument.
Basically, his position is that Congress’s intent was for exemption to be based on duties, and that a low salary test emphasized their intent. He then argues that the administration’s new regulation changes Congress’s intent by making the exemption primarily based on salary, with duties taking a secondary position.
So he’s not saying that the administration can’t change the salary test, he’s saying that the administration can’t change it by too much because then they’d be changing the intent of the law from a duties-dominated test to a salary-dominated test.
I’ll leave it to the appellate courts to see whether this tortured reading is valid legal interpretation… but I’m a little pissed off that he waited until a week before the law went into effect. I’ve been working with clients to implement this change for months now.
No it wasn’t a law but a rule made by USDOL.
You don’t need an hours cap, you just need to enforce the minimum wage (including time and a half for >40hr weeks) for salaried employees.
Then Congress needs to agree with you and pass that law.
Then it sounds like FLSA does allow DOL to change the threshold to at least some degree. Although I’m having trouble even finding that provision in the act. Probably searching for the wrong terms. Is this what I should be looking at (PDF)?