White House aims to extend overtime protections to five million

A new White House plan to extend overtime protections for workers could benefit up to 40,000 full-time salaried workers in Connecticut and five million nationwide in its first year.

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama this morning announced that the U.S. Department of Labor will propose a rule to update requirements for overtime pay eligibility, which currently apply only to workers earning less than $23,660 a year, or $455 per week. The proposed regulation would raise that threshold to extend overtime pay to full-time salaried workers earning less than $50,440, or $970 per week.

“Today, the department is updating the standard so that workers will not be expected to work for long hours without extra pay, leaving them time to care for their families. And those who do work extra time will be fairly compensated,” said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, in a conference call with reporters.

The Fair Labor Standards Act has required businesses to pay time-and-a-half for employees who work over 40 hours per week since 1938. But the salary threshold hasn’t been updated for inflation or wage growth since the 1970s, and an exception originally meant for high-earning executive, administrative and professional employees now includes a majority of salaried workers.

In 1975, 62 percent of full-time salaried workers were eligible for overtime pay, but today, that figure is only 8 percent.

“When I was growing up in Buffalo, NY, if one of my friends’ parents was a manager, that meant they were in the middle class. They had a responsible job, they supervised people, they mentored people, they may have worked more than 40 hours a week, but they received a fair salary,” said Thomas Perez, secretary of the Department of Labor, in the conference call. “Today, all too many managers are working hard and falling behind.”

Of the affected workers, 0.9 percent are in Connecticut.

The plan also includes a review to decide if changes should be made to the current duties test, which determines whether a worker is overtime eligible for overtime exempt, as well as guards to prevent erosion of overtime pay protections in the future by automatically updating the salary threshold for inflation and wage growth.

Tatiana Cirisano