4 Takeaways from the Dol’s Final Overtime Rule
The U.S. Department of Labor's newly announced final rule addressing the salary thresholds for overtime exemptions surprised employers' attorneys with its two-step rollout, while worker advocates said the thresholds could have gone higher.
Observers had been closely watching the development of the rule, Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees, the final version of which the DOL unveiled Tuesday.
[...]
Another takeaway attorneys noted is that the rule applies the same way to employers of different sizes and in different parts of the country. The threshold for lower-wage salaried workers is tied to the 35th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the southern U.S., which is the lowest-wage U.S. Census region.
"It still seems like the Department of Labor sees no difference between Fortune 500 companies and small businesses," said Jason Reisman of management-side firm Blank Rome LLP. "The DOL also makes no distinction between different areas of the country; for example, rural areas versus big cities."
Reisman, who is also president of the Wage and Hour Defense Institute, which submitted a comment on the proposed rule, questioned the DOL's authority to make such a change.
"Did Congress really intend to have the DOL pull the rug out from under 4 million workers who are currently actually performing exempt job duties?" he said.
To read the full article, please click here.
"4 Takeaways from the Dol’s Final Overtime Rule," by Max Kutner was published in Law360 Employment Authority on April 24, 2024.