The New Overtime Laws

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the changes to overtime legislation in the United States. The paper discusses the guidelines presented by the Department of Labor, explaining the new terminology employed. The paper analyzes the "Working Families Flexibility Act" (Ballenger's bill) and the "Family Friendly Workplace Act" (Ashcroft's bill). The paper contends that these titles are misleading as the changes in the overtime laws seem to benefit only the corporations and not the employees.

From the Paper:

"In the winter of 2004, The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued what it called "guidance" about President Bush's overtime legislation. Along with the guidance, they invented new obfuscatory language. When they discussed "payroll adjustment," a relatively benign-sounding term, they were really referring to "cutting base worker salaries so the additional overtime payments would bring their total pay to their old salaries, or raising salaries just to the $22,100 threshold so workers do not qualify for overtime" (Economic Opportunity Report). On the face of it, guidelines such as those, which advocated diminishing compensation for the work being done, might have been issued by a government department called the Department of Corporation Welfare, if we had one. Clearly, the suggested changes would benefit no one except the employer."

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