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posted by martyb on Monday November 28 2016, @12:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the longer-hours-for-same-pay dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:57PM (#434570)

    IOW, in your mind everything is filtered through a "government is always bad" filter. Are you really saying we should have complete open season on all fish and game until preyed upon to extinction and no real property laws at all?

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 30 2016, @01:10AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 30 2016, @01:10AM (#434762) Journal

    IOW, in your mind everything is filtered through a "government is always bad" filter. Are you really saying we should have complete open season on all fish and game until preyed upon to extinction and no real property laws at all?

    Government is a big player in making those problems what they are. It's very easy to have the disadvantages associated with government with the disadvantages associated with not having a government. The earlier post I quoted was a classic case where government action was justified by prior government harm.

    And that post is a complete miss on my observation that government isn't in the business of protecting anyone from overwork. Notice how many busy-bodies in this thread, with no business deciding how much people work, want to severely curtail how much people can work legally, while ignoring obvious workarounds like working multiple jobs.