This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.
Millions of U.S. workers may now become eligible for overtime pay under an overhaul of wage rules announced by the Biden administration yesterday.
The rule, which would make workers earning up to $55,000 a year eligible for overtime, is intended to reverse four decades of reducing the number of workers qualified to earn overtime pay. As Capital & Main reported in a series of stories last year, overtime pay has steadily eroded, so that the percentage of workers eligible for overtime is now a fraction of what it was in the 1970s.
Currently, workers who earn more than $35,568 annually are not eligible for overtime. An estimated 15% of full-time salaried workers qualified for overtime in 2022, down from more than 60% of full-time salaried workers in 1975. The new eligibility rule could make 3.6 million more U.S. workers eligible for overtime pay, according to the administration. Overtime is defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act as 1.5 times one’s hourly pay rate after working more than 40 hours per week.
“For over 80 years, a cornerstone of workers’ rights in this country is the right to a 40-hour workweek, the promise that you get to go home after 40 hours or you get higher pay for each extra hour that you spend laboring away from your loved...
A US judge has dismissed veteran singer Smokey Robinson's defamation claim against four former housekeepers who have accused him of sexual assault. The women sued the Motown star, 86, last year fo...