Capital & Main
Six years after President Obama’s ambitious attempt to expand overtime to millions of Americans was vigorously opposed by the business lobby and struck down by a conservative judge in Texas, President Biden is about to take another swing at the issue. And this time, it’s expected to face even stronger opposition due to a more divisive environment and the growing clout of a powerful new adversary — gig economy giants like Uber and DoorDash.
The Department of Labor is intensively working on a proposal it plans to introduce in October. The proposal is widely expected to increase the cap that currently bars overtime for salaries from just above $35,000 to more than $50,000. It may also more narrowly define the exemptions that have long kept employees from earning time and a half — enabling many more full-time salaried Americans to qualify for overtime.
The rule was expected to be introduced in April, but was pushed back to this fall while an army of lawyers and statisticians labor to make sure that it can withstand legal challenges from the business community.
It remains unclear how far the administration will go to overhaul the salary cap — in general, full-time salaried workers currently have to earn less than $35,568 per year to qualify for overtime — and the overtime threshold has not been updated in recent decades to keep pace with the cost of living and skyrocketing health care and housing costs. Sources close to the agency say that the Department of...
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump encouraged supporters on Saturday and again on Monday to vote by mail if they wanted, a change of tone for the US president, who has for years described mail-in ...