An Op-Ed by Marion Berry

United State Congressman – Arkansas’ 1^st District

Starting Monday, August 23, the overtime pay of millions of American workers will be immediately at risk, with devastating consequences to the families who rely on it to meet basic needs.

It will be the biggest pay cut America’s middle class has ever suffered.

The Administration recently revised the rules regarding which workers must receive overtime pay, or time-and-a-half, for hours over 40 worked in a single week. Though some tout the new rules as a much-needed simplification of the old ones, the truth is these changes are the first move in a larger campaign to gut overtime laws altogether.

What the new rules do is make it legal for employers from many industries across the U.S. economy to stop paying their workers overtime. These new regulations will cut the pay and lengthen the hours for at least 6 million workers making as little as $23,660 at a time when household incomes are down, prices are up, and there is a 1.8 million private-sector jobs deficit. Workers who might supervise one or two co-workers could lose their overtime pay, as could anyone designated a “team leader.”

The Bush regulations deny overtime pay to 30,000 nursery and pre-school teachers, 1.9 million low-level working supervisors in fast food restaurants, lodging and retail stores, and more than 900,000 employees without a college or graduate degree who would become “professional employees” because employers will be able to substitute work experience for a degree. 

Anyone designated a “team leader” on a “major project” by their employer would be denied overtime as well, even if they are not a supervisor, which could strip nearly 2.3 million workers of their overtime protections. In a boon to well-connected special interests, the regulations also deny overtime to 160,000 workers in the financial services industries, 130,000 chefs, and 87,000 computer programmers. 

Short-order cooks, reporters, IT employees and many other classifications of workers also stand to lose the extra pay they earn today, even if they have no supervisory duties at all.

Three former top officials with the Department of Labor – officials who had administered the overtime rules under Republican and Democratic administrations – have warned these changes will hurt workers.

Among the large number of families for whom overtime pay constitutes roughly one-quarter of their income, these changes will have immediate and harmful consequences. Without overtime pay, these families will struggle to pay for their mortgage, health insurance premiums and co-payments, utility bills and even groceries.

Nevertheless, these rules will take effect on August 23. They will take effect even though an unprecedented number of people from across the country – 75,280 of them – wrote to the Department of Labor to express their concerns.

The rules will take effect despite bipartisan consensus in the House of Representatives and the Senate that no worker that had been receiving overtime under the old rules should lose them under the new ones, a consensus which was thwarted by Republican Leadership.

Over the last two years, the median household income dropped by more than $1,400, while the cost of health care, education and gasoline has increased. Nearly 2 million private-sector jobs have been lost. It is unthinkable in this economic climate that the Administration is proposing overtime regulations that cut the pay families depend on.

I have faith in this country and the people who work in it. I know regardless of the situation now, America’s ingenuity and work-ethic will pull through. But this Administration cannot claim to fight for the middle class and continually throw up hurdles to slow their pursuit of economic security.