Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez reported on the Department’s blog yesterday that he has submitted a proposed revised rule to the Office of Management and Budget to address what President Obama believes are deficiencies in federal laws governing overtime pay. Working off the assumption that overtime pay rules have eroded over the years and that a high number of salaried workers who should be getting overtime are not eligible for overtime pay, the Department of Labor intends to enlarge the number of workers eligible for overtime pay protections. The proposed revisions are not yet public, but most commentators believe employees will now need to be paid an annual salary in excess of $50,000 to be exempt from the requirement that they be paid overtime.
The revisions come in response to a request by President Obama to revisit the regulations concerning the “white collar” exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the blog post, Secretary Perez referenced the President’s Overtime Fact Sheet, which lays out the reasons why changes to overtime pay are needed. Noting that the “white collar” exemption threshold has only been updated twice in the last 40 years, the President requested Secretary Perez to update overtime regulations while taking into account the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the changing nature of the American workplace, and to simplify overtime rules to make them easier to understand and implement.