Under the new regulation to be issued by the Labor Department on Wednesday, most salaried workers earning up to $47,476 a year must receive time-and-a-half overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours during a week. The previous cutoff for overtime pay, set in 2004, was $23,660. “This is a big deal to be able to help that many working people without Congress having to pass a new law,” said Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute, an early voice in urging the administration to take up the issue. “It’s really restoring rights that people had for decades and lost.”
The New York Times
May 18, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said many more than five million workers could benefit. Its vice president, Ross Eisenbrey, said millions of salaried workers paid above the current threshold have been eligible for overtime pay, but didn’t get it due to complexities with exemption tests. A higher threshold would make clear who is eligible, he said. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez expressed a similar view on Tuesday. “The overtime threshold is sort of a minimum wage for the middle class,” said Mr. Eisenbrey.
Wall Street Journal
May 18, 2016
The administration’s rule would benefit women, minorities and young workers the most, according to estimates from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The change will go into effect Dec. 1 of this year.
The Washington Post
May 18, 2016
The threshold also disappointed proponents of the new rule, including Ross Eisenbrey of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who first pitched an overhaul to the White House in 2013. “It means a million fewer employees will be helped,” he said before the rule was released.
Reuters
May 18, 2016
The regulation is expected to increase the number of workers eligible for overtime pay by more than four million by the Labor Department’s reckoning; the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute calculates the number affected at more than 12 million. These workers will receive either wage hikes or reduced hours (itself a kind of raise when wages remain constant). EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey says it’s “a significant step forward in the effort to boost wages for working people,” but Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calls it “a ham-handed effort to impose its will on America’s job creators” that will “mean fewer opportunities for growth.”
Politico
May 18, 2016
Left-leaning economists have been urging the White House to make the overtime rules more generous to workers. The rules are fairly complicated, and the last time they were adjusted was in 2004, during the George W. Bush administration. Whether workers are entitled to overtime depends not just on their salary but also on their job duties, and whether they qualify as a manager or a professional. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, the changes during the Bush years made it more difficult for many workers to prove they qualify for overtime.
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of EPI, said the final rule does a “great job” of addressing two issues for the middle class: “the need for more time and the need for more money.” “Overworked and underpaid managers, postdoctoral researchers, social workers, insurance claims workers, and many others will have their lives improved one way or another by this rule,” said Eisenbrey, who was one of the most vocal voices for the reform. “It’s great to see the government doing something significant to help the struggling middle class.” EPI estimates that the effects could be greater than the White House anticipates. The group projects that 12.5 million workers will “directly benefit” from the new rules — slightly more than half of them women, and a disproportionate share of them African-American and Hispanic. The biggest effects will be felt in the South, where a larger share of workers are carved out of protections under the current rules.
The Huffington Post
May 18, 2016
In 1975, 62 percent of full-time salaried workers qualified for overtime, according to the Labor Department, but because of inflation, today the share has dropped to 7 percent. Under the new rules, 35 percent of these workers will become overtime eligible. “Businesses have become accustomed to working low-level salaried employees long hours for no extra compensation, but the pendulum has swung too far, and it’s time to restore some balance,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in testimony last week before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
The Boston Globe
May 18, 2016
Many voters are enthusiastic about that anti-free-trade position, and for a reason. Yes, the vast majority of economists have concluded that free trade added U.S. jobs in such industries as transportation (aircraft and trains), energy, agriculture and services, while lowering prices for U.S. consumers. Free-trade supporters also point out that, since 1993, the U.S. economy has gained 30 million jobs. This figure dwarfs the jobs lost to NAFTA (about 682,900, according to an estimate from the Economic Policy Institute).
The Washington Post
May 18, 2016
But Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute—which played a role in formulating the regulation—said it was “certainly the biggest thing” the Obama administration has done “in terms of improving wages and salaries.”
Politico
May 18, 2016
According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, the average family has just $5,000 in retirement savings, which is not enough money to retire comfortably. Among older workers, the median amount of retirement savings jumps to $17,000, meaning half of all such families have more than $17,000, and half have less.
The Boston Globe
May 18, 2016