New overtime rules: favoring management?

To Ross, the new rules are another sign that the DOL "goes out of the way to do bad things for working people."

Traditionally the Labor Department under any administration, either Republican or Democratic, has been regarded as a supporter of workers in the perpetual conflict between management and labor over government regulation. The Commerce Department is seen as the protector of business.

But organized labor has taken aim at the Bush administration's Labor Secretary Elaine Chao for not taking their side. "We have two secretaries of Commerce," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has grumbled.

A Labor Department fact sheet accuses the AFL-CIO of "a greater interest in playing politics than in protecting workers."

Both sides agree on a need to revise overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The rules have been unaltered for 30 years despite many changes in the economy and the labor force. During that time the salary threshold below which employees are guaranteed overtime compensation, regardless of their duties, has remained at $155 a week, or $8,060 a year, ignoring decades of inflation.

For the layman, the 154 pages of new rules in the Federal Register are almost incomprehensible. It is difficult to determine, without expertise, whether the new overtime rules help or hinder workers.

They do create a new salary threshold of $455 a week or $23,660 a year. DOL claims that 1.3 million salaried workers now earning less than $455 a week will gain overtime pay. But Eisenbrey maintains that this DOL analysis is "flawed and demonstrably wrong" and that only 384,000 of these low-paid workers would be guaranteed overtime should they work more than 40 hours per week. (To get a total net figure - overtime losers minus overtime winners - that 384,000 should be subtracted from Eisenbrey's 6 million estimated losers.)

Recognizing the complexity problem, the AFL-CIO asked three former Labor Department officials, who worked under both Republican and Democratic regimes, to evaluate the new rules. After proclaiming total independence, the three experts, in 40 pages, offered damning conclusions.

The rules exempt from overtime, they write, a greater proportion of the workforce than "Congress could have originally intended." They remove existing overtime protection for "large numbers of employees." They "failed to restore" an appropriate salary level requirement, and failed to establish "reasonable and clear criteria" for determining those not able to claim overtime, including executives, administrators, professionals, and outside sales employees. The rules could result in a "profusion" of court litigation.

Worst of all, the three held that the department in its rules "failed to protect and promote the interests of working people," a "core" mission of the DOL.

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