After decades of decline in overtime pay, the Biden administration is considering action to sharply expand access in a time of high inflation. This is the third article of a four-part series examining the 40-year effort by big business and elected officials to deny Americans extra pay for extra work.
Guests at the Tempe Mission Palms resort hotel — with its mid-century lounge and heated rooftop pool — are unlikely to think much about workers like Yolanda Hernandez. After all, she is usually in the laundry room cleaning the soiled sheets and dirty towels they leave behind.
Hernandez’s workday typically begins at 7 a.m. and, since she’s often required to work extra hours, she sometimes stays on the job into the evening. Even though guests frequently fork over $300 a night for a room, Hernandez says her employers don’t always pay her the small supplemental overtime she legally earns. Despite three decades doing this sort of work in the Arizona desert, she has often received her paycheck at her current job and discovered “they’d short me on hours.”
The problem is that Hernandez, who turns 60 this year, depends on that overtime pay to help buy groceries, pay the rent and build a little financial security. The loss of five or six hours of overtime pay is both disheartening and detrimental. “I’d be planning for an extra bump in my check and, when it wouldn’t be there, it would be a blow and I would have to scramble to make ends meet.”
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