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Common Dreams reports
[On November 22, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant of Texas] halted an Obama administration rule that would have expanded overtime pay for millions of workers, a decision that was slammed by employees' rights advocates.
The U.S. Department of Labor rule, which was set to go into effect on December 1, would have made overtime pay available to full-time salaried employees making up to $47,476 a year. It was expected to touch every nearly every sector [1] in the U.S. economy. The threshold for overtime pay was previously set at $23,660, and had been updated once in 40 years--meaning any full-time employees who earned more than $23,600 were not eligible for time-and-a-half when they worked more than 40 hours a week.
[...] Workers' rights advocates reacted with dismay and outrage. David Levine, CEO and co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council, mourned the ruling, saying the opponents were "operating from short-sighted, out-moded thinking".
"The employees who will be hurt the most and the economies that will suffer the most are in the American heartland, where wages are already low", Levine said. "When employers pay a fair wage, they benefit from more productive, loyal, and motivated employees. That's good for a business' bottom line and for growing the middle class that our nation's economy depends on. High road businesses understand that better compensation helps build a better work culture."
[...] Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), noted [2] that the rule would have impacted up to 12.5 million workers, citing research by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
"The business trade associations and Republican-led states that filed the litigation in Texas opposing the rules have won today, but will not ultimately prevail in their attempt to take away a long-overdue pay raise for America's workers", she said. "Unfortunately, for the time being, workers will continue to work longer hours for less pay thanks to this obstructionist litigation."
[1][2] Content is behind scripts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 29 2016, @01:59AM
So, yes, there are a certain number of impoverished people who do nothing but expect handouts, just as there are a certain number of C-level employees who expect nothing but bonuses and raises no matter how badly they lead their division of a corporation that is losing money.
What this particular law is about isn't about handouts for the poor, quite the opposite, it's about making it more expensive for employers to work individual employees more than 40 hours a week. On the face of it, to me, this means hiring more people to do the same job instead of working the ones you've got into oblivion while leaving the rest unemployed.
If I were a Presidential candidate and I were going to "fix" unemployment, I'd move push for legislation to move this mandatory 1.5x pay overtime down from 40 hours a week, one hour per year, until we have an "acceptable" decrease in unemployment. While we are at it, start 2x pay at 60 hours a week, and similarly squeeze that down until virtually nobody is working their employees 60 hours a week or more.
There is life outside work, families that are "living the American Dream" with 2.1 kids in a 3 bed 2 bath home in the burbs, in the majority of jobs (>50%) have both parents working... and even if only one is forced into 60 and 70 hour work weeks, that's significant stress on the household, things that need taking care of that aren't, and things that must be taken care of being done inefficiently because they can't afford to jeopardize their crappy employment situation.
If you want to break the welfare state and teaching people that handouts are to be expected, make it easier to get a job, not harder.
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