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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: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday November 28 2016, @02:34PM
This reasoning is correct if you are the only business in town. Since you probably aren't, it doesn't actually work that way.
The reason: My labor expenses = income for your customers => higher sales for you. So, for example, if you're running a greasy spoon in a town with a couple of other stores and a Walmart down the road, when Walmart's wages go up, you get more people coming into your greasy spoon more often, which means you can make more sales and possibly raise your prices a bit, and that helps you cover the expenses of higher wages for your cook or waitstaff. And your waitress can now afford to pay the shop just down Main Street to fix her car, which helps them out in paying their mechanic. And the mechanic can now afford to eat at your restaurant, in a virtuous cycle. Also, if your town happens to be near a major travel route, your hypothetical greasy spoon can also benefit from increased numbers of tourists or truckers stopping in for a sandwich and coffee.
In my example, the Walmart down the road is important, because what it means is that more of the revenue from that store stays in the area (in the hands of their employees) rather than trickling up to the Walton family in New York City, where they aren't likely to be patrons of your SME.
What will really make a big difference in your local economy, though, is the price of anything you sell to people outside of town. For example, if you're in an area where, say, cattle ranching is the big industry, the price of beef will have far more effect on your own success than just about anything else.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @08:22PM
Sounds like you're describing the "broken window fallacy."
Liberals don't think, they feel. That's how we get so much irrationality.
The market will pay you what your labor is worth. If you don't like where you're working, you're free to go somewhere else. If no one else will pay you what you're making now, your labor isn't worth what you think it is.
Everyone knows that price fixing doesn't work.
Employers will just adjust such that no overtime is paid. My wife was a victim of this legislation. She's hourly now, but not allowed to have any overtime. Internal customer needs help after hours? tough. Now she has to punch out for everything (Dr's appt, etc.), whereas, when she was salaried, she could come and go as necessary.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday November 28 2016, @09:28PM
Do you really mean "price fixing", or do you mean "minumum wage", or do you mean something else?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:21AM
I'm sorry, where in this plan do we stop taxing the rich so they can "trickle down" the extra money to the rest of us?
What you propose doesn't sound realistic, it certainly doesn't match anything I've seen implemented in the U.S. economic system in my lifetime. Are you a Communist, or just an idiot? (Language I learned watching our recent Presidential debates.)
So many "red state" voters were brought up with the rhetoric of "I ain't never taken no charity from no one and no child of mine ever will either, or I'll disown them," often spouted from the mouths of parents too proud to admit that they are on long term disability, or other social support programs. They point at welfare babies and greedy "entitled" takers of charity, but they miss the fact that the vast majority of people want to work, want decent paying jobs, and wouldn't be on social support if they had a better alternative.
The current social security program strongly discourages people from working, it is so difficult to get benefits in the first place, and so easy to lose them if you start earning income, that many many people take the defeatist position of just trying to get by on the benefits - it sucks, but it will suck worse to take that job and get laid off after three months and then be without benefits for the next six months while they try to fight to get their benefits back. At some levels, the programs and their income based reductions in benefits make sense, but when you throw the bureaucracy into the mix it's a whole different reality.
It would be fun to roll out UBI and "give social safety net benefits to everyone, whether they're working or not" just to watch the bright red angry faces on television attempt to explain why it will bring the end of days.
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