Republicans Try To Kill Biden’s Big Overtime Rule | EUROtoday

Salaried workers who work lengthy hours for low pay aren’t discovering a lot sympathy amongst Republicans on Capitol Hill.

GOP lawmakers filed a decision in Congress on Wednesday that will block the Labor Department from extending additional time protections to tens of millions of salaried staff, a key office reform pursued by President Joe Biden.

Under federal legislation, solely sure staff have a proper to time-and-a-half pay after they work greater than 40 hours in every week. Currently, salaried staff should earn lower than $35,568 per 12 months to be mechanically entitled to the additional time pay.

A brand new rule from the Labor Department, finalized in April, would increase that wage threshold to $58,656 per 12 months, bringing an estimated 4 million further staff beneath the legislation’s safety. Employers would then need to pay these staff a premium after they work further hours, whereas now they don’t need to pay them something in any respect for that point.

But the GOP lawmakers have filed what’s often called a “resolution of disapproval” beneath the Congressional Review Act, which, if handed and signed into legislation, would nullify the reform.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) sponsored the decision within the GOP-controlled House. Forty Republican colleagues have joined him as co-sponsors as of Friday. No Democrats have signed on to the laws.

GOP Sen. Mike Braun (Ind.) is main the companion laws within the Senate, the place Democrats maintain a threadbare majority.

Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to kill progressive reforms earlier than, most notably on the finish of Barack Obama’s presidency.

This explicit effort has slim possibilities of succeeding, because the laws would face a Biden veto menace if it managed to cross each chambers. And whatever the maneuvers in Washington, Biden’s additional time reforms face the potential of being blocked in federal court docket. But the decision nonetheless helps present the place each events stand on a key financial situation — employee pay — in an election 12 months.

Business teams have come out strongly towards Biden’s additional time rule and have opposed comparable reforms for years, claiming they’d power employers to chop jobs. But giving extra workers additional time protections is in style amongst votersvery similar to the thought of elevating the minimal wage.

The Labor Department estimates the reform would switch $1.5 billion a 12 months from employers to workers within the type of greater wages. The advantages would go disproportionately to staff who’re ladies and other people of colour, in accordance with an evaluation from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning suppose tank.

But Walberg referred to as the additional time adjustments “burdensome” in a assertion and claimed it could result in inflation.

“Small businesses, nonprofits, and colleges across America will now be looking at bottom lines, and then make the tough decisions to lay off valuable staff or force salaried workers into hourly positions,” he stated.

Braun argued that additional time selections needs to be left to the bosses. “If the free market sets the price of labor, opportunity and prosperity are the result,” he stated.

Overtime protections within the U.S. stretch again to the Great Depression, when the fitting to time-and-a-half pay was first enshrined in legislation. The thought was to stop employers from overworking their workers, and to unfold extra work round throughout a time of excessive unemployment. If an organization must pay a premium to work somebody additional time, the considering went, then the employer would possibly select to rent one other employee to cowl the extra hours.

But the legislation has gone lengthy stretches with out being up to date, and so fewer workers as a share of the broader workforce now take pleasure in additional time rights in contrast with many years in the past.

The Labor Department stated when it introduced the proposed reforms that it was making an attempt to rectify “outdated and out-of-sync rules” that go away many low-paid salaried workers — retail retailer managers specifically — working numerous further hours with nothing to point out for it.