To overcome this disparity, labor advocates and other experts say, there are two main approaches that promise to increase middle-class wages considerably. The first would be to improve the bargaining power of workers, so that they could claim more of the wealth generated by productivity gains, which the affluent are keeping primarily to themselves. “I do believe the single biggest factor contributing to middle-class wage stagnation is the erosion of unions and collective bargaining rights,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, who has studied the effect of the decline.
The New York Times
July 2, 2015
A threshold of $984 a week would cover 15 million people, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. In 1975, overtime rules covered 65 percent of salaried workers. Today, it’s just 12 percent.
The Associated Press
June 30, 2015
Monday night, President Obama announced that he wants to double that threshold, to $50,400 per year. The move would expand the number of people eligible for overtime from about 8 percent of the salaried workforce to about 40 percent, according to a recent analysis by the left-leaning, labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
June 30, 2015
The increased salary ceiling would bring overtime benefits to about 15 million more workers, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told Bloomberg Business.
USA Today
June 30, 2015
In 1975, about 62 percent of the salaried workforce were eligible for overtime pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates for low-income workers. Today, because of inflation, 8 percent are covered.
The Boston Globe
June 30, 2015
The overtime threshold has been updated only once since 1975 and now covers a mere 8 percent of salaried workers, according to a recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Raising the threshold to $50,440 would bring it roughly in line with the 1975 threshold, after inflation. Back then, that covered 62 percent of salaried workers. But because of subsequent changes in the economy’s structure, the Obama administration’s proposed rule would cover a smaller percentage — about 40 percent.
Politico
June 30, 2015
The increase in the salary limit would make overtime available to 15 million more workers, Bloomberg said, citing an estimate by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research body partly funded by unions. “It would provide a better work-family balance for millions of workers, giving some higher pay for working overtime and others reduced hours without any reduction in pay,” Eisenbrey told Reuters earlier this month.
Reuters
June 30, 2015
The overtime cutoff covered 8 percent of salaried workers last year, compared with 65 percent in 1975, according to an analysis by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group partly funded by labor unions. The definition of a manager is ambiguous enough under current regulations that restaurant or retail workers who spend most of their time doing manual labor or serving customers can be deemed “executives” exempt from overtime, Eisenbrey said.
Bloomberg
June 30, 2015
Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens in picture.
The Washington Post
June 29, 2015
U.S. chief executives make on average 300 times what the average U.S. worker makes, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal
June 29, 2015