One Industry That Will Hate Obama’s New Overtime Rules: The Media

[Agschmid]

[center][/center]

Today the Obama administration officially proposed new regulations that it says will entitle at least 4.6 million additional Americans to overtime pay. On the whole, it seems like a reasonable move that may encourage businesses to hire more workers rather than milk employees for all the uncompensated labor they can get away with.

But, man, let me tell you—this is going to make life difficult for your favorite magazines and websites.

Under the rule change, most salaried employees who earn less the $50,440 per year will automatically be eligible for time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Currently, the cutoff is just $23,660, after which workers can be exempt from overtime requirements if they're considered management or a professional.

Why the need for such a big jump? Labor activists and progressives argue that today's overtime threshold lends itself to all sorts of abuses by employers, who find tricky ways to categorize low-salary workers as supervisors in order to get out of paying them for all their hours. This happens, partly, because the rules about who counts as a manager are murky at best. At a big box store, for instance, somebody might be called a supervisor if she spends a part of each day coordinating her colleagues' schedules, even though she spends the vast majority of her time behind a cash register or stocking shelves.

Source.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I say good.

There's a thing employers can do to avoid paying overtime. It's called hiring more workers. So instead of one person working 60 hours and getting paid for 40 as before, and instead of one person working 60 hours and getting paid for 80 hours after, companies can hire on two people working 30 hours apiece, or one person working 40 and one working 20, and pay them for the hours they actually work.

[Cha]

2. Thank you, Agschmid!

[Omaha Steve]

3. K&R!

[sheshe2]

4. K&R