Federal overtime law to have little local impact

Business attorney thinks new rules are clearer

Recent changes in federal overtime rules will make it easier to be a working person in the United States, although little impact will be felt locally.

The new federal regulations took effect Monday, and changed the circumstances in which white-collar workers can be exempted from receiving overtime pay, according to the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.

A fact sheet provided on the L&I Web site, www.lni.wa.gov/, is designed help employers and workers determine whether new federal overtime rules or state rules apply to their specific circumstances.

"The Fair Labor Standards Act establishes standards for federal minimum wage and overtime pay," explained Jessica Gleason, press secretary for the office of U.S. Congressman Richard "Doc" Hastings, R-4th District.

Gleason said the law was enacted in 1938 and has been amended on occasion to take into account changes in the workplace, but has not been significantly updated in over 50 years.

"The changes are aimed at modernizing vague and outdated regulations," she said. "The new rules are aimed at making it easier for workers to know their rights, for employers to understand their obligations and for the Department of Labor to enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act."

Gleason said that the most significant change is perhaps the final rule, which guarantees that any worker making less than $23,660 per year is entitled to overtime. The limit is up from $8,060 in the previous regulations.

Gleason also noted that Washington is one of several states that mandates its own overtime regulations, which in some circumstances exceed the federal standard.

"When both state and federal standards exist, the employer must follow the one that is more favorable to the worker," Gleason said.

"Having reviewed it and having done some practice in employment law under the old law, this is much clearer," said Julie Harper, attorney at law with Harper Law Firm, PLLC, in Moses Lake. She added that she did not think there would be a lot of changes in how anybody is actually treated, because "this just clarifies what case law has been trying to say since they wrote the old law."

Harper said one example is where employers mistakenly believed that if an employee was paid on a salary basis, or if a person's title is manager, there is no requirement to pay overtime.

"That wasn't it at all; title means nothing," she said. "You can call someone a manager, but if they're not actually managing, you can't pay them a salary and have them exempt from overtime."

Harper said that the laws also help with the sentiment that if someone is paid enough, then they are also exempt.

"That's partially true," she said. "There's an exemption for non-manual laborers or office workers that earn over $100,000 a year, but in any case, if you do any type of what they refer to as blue-collar work, manual labor, it doesn't matter how much they pay you, you still get overtime."

Harper said that another litigation area that will be helped are the first responders — police officers, fire fighters and the like — who were told to be on call, but were not paid for that time.

"They couldn't exactly go anywhere and do anything, because they were on call," Harper said. "So they had to go through huge amounts of litigation, in all the nation to say that on call should be compensated. Now it just says that."

Harper said the rules explicitly protect and recognize overtime rights for police, firefighters, other first responders, licensed practical nurses and others.

The Department of Labor estimates that under the new rules, 1.3 million more Americans will become entitled to overtime pay.

But the changes have drawn protests from labor groups such as the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations).

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, three of the highest ranking Labor officials under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton recently released a report saying that aside from the higher threshold for automatic eligibility, every change in the new regulations means less overtime protection for workers.

According to the Washington Post article, salaried workers who fall between $23,660 and $100,000 a year might lose overtime based on a duties test which describes the tasks that determine whether a worker can be classified as a professional ineligible for overtime. Those making more than $100,000 will lose their overtime rights unless they do not regularly perform professional, administrative or executive duties.

The Washington Post quoted Baldwin Robertson, a lawyer who works with the AFL-CIO, as saying that the negative impact is being made in the duties test. Robertson said workers in the food industry who spend most of their time doing manual work, but sometimes instruct subordinates, could lose overtime under the duties test because they can be reclassified as team leaders or executives because they lead teams, or supervise two or more people.

Harper said that the argument that the regulation changes would take away overtime from people was probably more of a "political year argument" than anything else.

"All this is doing, from what I can tell, is clarifying what case law has been doing for the last few years anyway," she said. "Straight from the Department of Labor, they believe that it's going to be harder for employers to deny overtime protection."

Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce Director Karen Wagner said she did not know too much about the new regulations.

"With the minimum wage the highest that it is almost in the nation, any extra costs that are going to increase the direct costs to businesses are going to hurt us," Wagner said. "We don't need additional burdens."

But Harper said she doesn't think it will have a lot of local impact.

"The law itself is not actually changing that much that I can see," she said. "There's going to be some particular types of occupations that will change dramatically, but overall it looks like it gives more protection to blue-collar workers."