(The Los Angeles Times published the following story by Justin Gest on July 1.)
LOS ANGELES — Organized labor orchestrated a protest on the Labor Department’s front lawn Monday in a last-ditch attempt to block a proposed rule that, according to union officials, would sharply expand the number of workers exempted from receiving overtime pay.
The labor demonstration came on the final day for public comment on a proposed rule published by the Labor Department three months ago.
The rule, which the department expects to put into effect by next year, would broaden the definition of workers exempt from overtime pay to include any employee in a “position of responsibility,” a definition that opponents say too many workers fill.
But Joseph Beachboard, editor in chief of the California Employment Law Letter, said the rule would affect very few California workers.
“You’re talking less than 1 percent of the workers who are governed by federal law over state law,” said Beachboard, who is a partner with the law firm of Ogletree Deakins in Hermosa Beach. “These changes won’t have a significant impact on them because the California standards are already radically different from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We have more difficult-to-meet duties tests.”
The 1 percent of Californians the change would affect include federal employees and citizens employed on Indian reservations.
The Labor Department has focused on another part of the new rule guaranteeing overtime status to all workers earning less than $22,100 a year, rather than the current level, unchanged since 1975, of $8,060.
The AFL-CIO and other labor organizations favor that change as a good first step toward shrinking the number of workers not receiving time-and-a-half for overtime.
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act standardized the 40-hour workweek and required employers to pay workers 50 percent more for extra hours logged, unless the employee was considered to be an exempted “salaried worker.”
The Labor Department’s proposed regulations would exempt workers with lower educational levels, less authority and less independent decision-making discretion than today’s regulations exempt.
The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that 2.5 million salaried employees and 5.5 million hourly workers would lose overtime pay qualifications if the proposed rules are adopted.
The Bush administration, however, said 1.3 million workers between the $8,060 and $22,100 levels would gain automatic overtime pay status.
Unions and their supporters have lined up against the proposed rule. Members of the American Federation of Teachers, United Food and Commercial Workers and the Communications Workers of America joined the AFL-CIO and demanded that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao withdraw it.
“The Bush administration is basically giving employers a manual on how to lay off workers and force the ones you keep to work double hours,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who called the rule “economic poison.”
Tammy McCutchen, administrator of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, said the rule would “clarify the duties tests to make them easier to understand, and to make it easier for the Department of Labor to enforce the protections. The duties tests were written in 1949, and they don’t reflect the jobs of today.”
Labor Department officials are reading and evaluating the comments received on the proposed rules. McCutchen estimated that the department would be ready to issue final regulations early next year.
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, sent a letter to Chao on Monday to protest the new overtime rule. “Millions — who have long depended upon overtime work to help them make ends meet — will face effective pay cuts as opportunities to work overtime are diminished,” he wrote.
Miller sponsored a bill with Rep. Peter King, D-N.Y., that would prevent the Labor secretary from exempting any employee who is not otherwise exempted by current law.