Posted on: Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Proposed overtime revamp draws public's interest
| • | Congress tackles overtime rule next |
| • | How would changes affect your workplace? |
By Brian Tumulty
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's proposal to overhaul the federal regulation governing who qualifies for overtime provoked a flood of public comments.
A group of police officers from Omaha and several McDonald's franchise owners from Illinois were among the workers, employers, labor unions, business trade groups and law firms who sent comments.
The majority of the comments — 52,400 — came as e-mail. And most of the e-mails came from members of organized labor who used the same form letter.
"Overtime checks help working families like mine, pay for the things we need to support our families," wrote Anthony Espinoza of Tucson, Ariz., in an e-mail that mirrored word for word the e-mails sent by Jamila Hussain of Yonkers, N.Y., and Bonnie Lotz of Cincinnati.
Other e-mail came from people such as Lida Orkin of Ithaca, N.Y., who said that as a small-business owner, she "believes firmly in the ethical proposition that all people deserve to be paid for their labor, and at a higher rate the more the time cuts into family and leisure time."
However, business groups generally took the position that they favored the regulatory change because it would be easier to classify more employees as exempt from overtime.
Marianne Schiefer, a human resources manager for a printing company in Stevens Point, Wis., sent an e-mail applauding the proposed change in the definition of an administrative employee who is exempt from overtime from a person who uses discretion and independent judgment to a worker who holds "a position of authority."
"Further, I urge the department to include customer service representatives, estimators and production schedulers as examples of positions that fit into the new definition of administrative employees," Schiefer wrote.
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, whose members operate 34,000 pharmacies and employ more than 100,000 pharmacists, also requested that the Labor Department go even further in redefining jobs that could be considered exempt from overtime.
The drug store association suggested that the new definition for an executive make allowances for a "sole charge executive" who may be in charge of a 24-hour drug store when only one other employee is working.
"Clearly, anyone in sole charge of an establishment is an executive at that establishment," wrote S. Lawrence Kocot, senior vice president and general counsel of the chain drugstore association.
Employers and workers' advocates disagreed whether the new threshold of $425 a week for allowing workers to be paid a salary would be too high or not high enough.
Workers earning less than $425 a week, or $22,100 annually, would automatically qualify for overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week.
Ellen Bravo, executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, wrote that allowing someone earning as little as $22,100 to be ineligible for overtime would mean that the sole breadwinner for a family of four would be poor enough to qualify for food stamps.
"Based on the experience of our members, mostly low-wage working women, we feel the proposed revisions to the rules governing these exemptions will make it much easier for employers to avoid paying overtime to employees," Bravo wrote.
