Recently a new overtime law was passed, which has gotten a lot of people upset and confused. Many hourly laborers are complaining because they fear that they may loose their overtime pay that they have been getting for so long. Many business owners are also confused, because they may not know who they still have to pay overtime wages to and who they don’t.Just to help clear up some of the confusion, according to whitehouse.gov’s “Ask the White House” the following people will still be entitled to their overtime pay:
Hourly workers will continue to qualify for overtime, no matter how much they earn or what they do.
Manual workers or blue collar workers are automatically entitled to overtime regardless of how much they earn.
First Responders like police, firefighters, and EMT’s, as well as Licensed Practical Nurses have their overtime protection strengthened.
Workers who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement will continue to get overtime under the terms of that collective bargaining agreement.
Workers earning less than $23,660 will now have a guarantee to overtime protection – many of these for the first time – regardless of their title or responsibilities. This change will benefit 6.7 million workers.
Because of the updated duties tests, many workers earning more than $23,660 per year will also have strengthened overtime protection.
So basically any union member who already gets overtime in their contract, anyone who is an hourly employee, police and other emergency personnel and anyone making less than $23,660 per year will still get their overtime pay.
What this means is actually a benefit for employees. According to the old overtime law, someone making as little as $8,060 per year/$155 per week could still be exempt from receiving overtime pay. Put it this way, when I was in high school, I worked at a grocery store for about $7/hr. for about 25 hours a week. My gross pay right there was $175/week and I was still 15 hours away from thinking about getting paid for overtime. So in terms of the old law, my employer didn’t have to pay me for overtime even if I worked that many hours. Under the new law, however I would have been able to receive overtime pay.
What does this mean for employers then? Well, really not much. A lot of employees are union workers anyway, so they most likely have an overtime clause in their contract. Then there are hourly workers who for the most part probably got some sort of overtime pay anyway, and then salaried professionals, who would very rarely get any overtime.
But I guess I gave a little summary to this topic because I wanted people to be able to make an informed decision. A decision as to whether or not it is right for the government to say to employers that a particular group of employees has to be paid overtime for work done over a certain amount of time. I mean, think about it from an employer’s point of view. Say you have a manufacturing company and 100 employees manufacturing for you. How much is their labor worth to you when they put together the first product of the day? What about the 5th or the 100th? What about the products made after the employee has already been working for 8 hours? Is his/her labor any more valuable to you then? If so what makes it more valuable? Are they doing something different in the 8th hour that they weren’t doing in the 1st? Will your customers see this value and be more inclined to pay a higher price for your product? If the answer is no, then how can you expect an employer to pay a higher price for the same quality of labor?
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