A recent federal extra time pay rule went into effect Monday, expanding the protections to and earnings potential for about 1 million salaried staff.
U.S. government officials have said that the extra time expansion, one in every of the most important in recent history, means more staff will now be compensated for the additional hours they spend at work and away from their families. An estimated 4 million people will profit from the changes to extra time pay once they’re fully in effect come 2025. Specifically, they’ll now be entitled to one-and-a-half times pay for time they put in over the usual 40-hour week.
Announced in April, the Department of Labor’s rule change affects the exemption criteria for extra time pay. This extra time exemption — the chief, administrative or skilled (“EAP”) exemption — applies when employees performs certain job duties and have higher salaries.
The salary threshold to be “exempt” just jumped from $35,568 per 12 months to $43,888. With a better threshold for exemption, more staff are entitled to 1.5 times pay for extra time work. (Alternatively, employers could raise salaries to make sure employees remain exempt under Fair Labor Standards Act rules.)
The brink is scheduled to extend again on Jan. 1 to $58,656, which is able to profit 3 million more people, in accordance with the White House.
Who’s eligible for extra time pay
The change that took effect on Monday means that almost all staff who make under $844 per week should get extra time pay. Barring legal setbacks, that quantity will go as much as $1,128 per week next 12 months.
The Biden administration says stronger extra time laws lift up the country’s middle class. Time beyond regulation rules “were established to guard staff from exploitation and to learn staff, their families and our communities” by ensuring folks aren’t overworked and underpaid, in accordance with a blog post from the Department of Labor. However the salary threshold hadn’t been adjusted in recent a long time to maintain up with wage increases, which it said “caused an erosion of the actual value of the salary threshold.”
In the long run, the thresholds will increase on an everyday schedule every three years.
Nonetheless, the extra time change faces legal challenges in Texas that could affect implementation. Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the rule from taking effect for state employees in Texas. The judge wrote that the federal government’s changes to extra time rules under this law must based on job duties not wages alone.
In 2016, the identical court struck down an identical attempt at extra time pay expansion but did so at a national level. Opponents of the expansion of this recent slate of extra time protections are hoping that may occur again.
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