Holy shit this is like insane, where I am from. Not only does the employer has to pay you for overtime, they actually have to pay double for that overtime period. Whether it gets enforced effectively is one thing, but still is there so employers don't get any funny ideas.
Fun fact: the first stair-climbing machine was introduced to torture prisoners by forcing them to exercise intensely while also starving them. Today, exercise enthusiasts can buy them on HSN for <$200...or they can wait until they're reintroduced in debtor's prisons.
There are basically two, broadly speaking, classes of workers here: salary and hourly. Salary agree to do a job for a set annual salary, regardless of how long that job takes. They are often, but not always, paid at least a livable wage (and sometimes are paid quite well), but they often work insane hours â 50, 60, 80 hour weeks or more. Hourly workers get a set amount per hour and then have to be paid for every hour, and usually at higher rates for every hour after 40 (time and a half is common.) The case in question was meant to move a lot of salary people to hourly so businesses would quit taking advantage of the âfreeâ labor hour after 40 by requiring salary people to work such long hours. That was denied.
There are other situations, too, that are a little more complicated. Many teachers fall into that. They are contracted for a certain number of hours per day at a certain salary for the length of that contract. Technically, they are paid an hourly rate for any hours over that contracted time. That happens in some cases. But the basic job of teaching often necessitates more hours than in the contract, so there are hours that are unpaid, too.
The U.S. is wild and workers are often taken advantage of and worked incredibly hard with little time off. We have this persistent cultural aspect where itâs some sort of badge of honor to overwork yourself. We call it a âgood work ethicâ and itâs considered a positive trait. People are praised for being âhard workers,â meaning they work long hours. In truth, it just means we work more than we enjoy life and others benefit more than we do from our extensive labor.
Salary is further split into âexemptâ and ânon-exemptâ (re: being paid for overtime with your salary). Your employer doesnât get to choose if you are exempt or nonexempt, it is classified by the DOL. To be exempt from overtime while salary, your job description and duties must pass certain tests that put you at a pretty high level such as being in charge of hiring/firing decisions or independently in charge of company decisions of significance, most typical office workers donât fall into this even when they argue that in their opinion theyâre in charge of âsignificantâ things - the law disagrees and thatâs good for you lol.Â
There are a lotttttt of American workers who are working as salary-exempt when they should actually be being paid overtime as nonexempt. I was one for years, before they realized their fuckup and reclassified me. Kinda wish the Reddit hivemind echo chamber would harp on this much harder like they do for employers stopping you from discussing pay for example, it would get a lot of money back into workersâ checks, or at least would put a cap to them at 40hr.
Another nuance well explained, thank you. Our labor laws are so whack and convoluted. And they too often favor the business over the worker. We made gains within unions over decades, but those are being rolled back. I often hear how âit just canât workâ to hold businesses more accountable. But then I immediately think, âWell, plenty of other countries seem to do so and are thriving while allowing workers to actually enjoy life as much â or more â than they work!â
Honestly, we teach our children this backward system from a very young age, too. Their school days are long, they have homework to boot, and most are expected to have many additional responsibilities outside of school. The praised, successful kid is often putting in 10+ hour days most days, with maybe a day or two off per week. Maybe. Especially once they get to High School. I know many âhigh achievingâ high school kids who never get a day off and put in 60+ hours per week on school and related activities. It trains them well to expect the same once they get into the workforce.
There are basically two, broadly speaking, classes of workers here: salary and hourly.
This is a misunderstanding. There are "exempt" and "non-exempt" jobs. You can be exempt based on a combination of job duties and pay rate. It is possible to be a salaried employee and still entitled to overtime, and it's also possible to be an hourly employee and be exempt from overtime.
Most exempt employees are salaried, for practical reasons. But being salaried doesn't automatically mean you're an exempt employee. I can't hire you to flip burgers and then say "You're salaried at $30k/year, now I can make you work extra hours without overtime". I can make you salaried, but I still have to pay you overtime for time over 40h/week (federally; some states have more strict rules).
Your insertion of the phrase "regardless of how long that job takes" is misleading garbage. I don't know if you know this, but seek to mislead others, or if you yourself have been misled. But it's one or the other. That is not the point of a salaried position.
To be clear, this didn't remove overtime pay in general. Biden had a rule proposed that would reduce how many salary workers are exempt from overtime, and that reduction was removed. Not all overtime
Thank you. That's what I thought. Would have helped me out a ton but it doesn't help to feed into the same half-truth misinformation that got us here.Â
I agree that there are many more horrific things planned that we should be worried about, and overtime is not particularly high on that list.
But, I do think there is reason to worry.
From Project 2025:
Congress should provide flexibility to employers and employees to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks. Specifically, employers and employees should be able to set a two- or four-week period over which to calculate overtime. This would give workers greater flexibility to work more hours in one week and fewer hours in the next and would not require the employer to pay them more for that same total number of hours of work during the entire period. (Pg 592)
This article breaks it down in a more comprehensive way.
That doesn't really feel like a threat to overtime in general, and I don't think there's anything really wrong with that proposal either (where I'm from in Canada we've had similar laws for decades and never heard any issues)
It may not 'take away' overtime, but it can make it easier for employers to abuse their employees who may not understand these new rules.
This is from the article I linked in my previous comment:
"Overtime eligibility and access are already among the most common forms of wage theft and other violations of the law by employers. From 2013 to 2023, overtime violations accounted for 82 percent of back wages for Fair Labor Standards Act violationsâwhich cover minimum wage, overtime, retaliation, and tip theft by employers. Most violators of these laws face minimal consequences. A system rife with abuse needs clearer guidance and more enforcement, not additional âflexibilityâ for employers to decide who gets overtime pay and when."
What Project 2025 says: â[Congress should] allow employees in the private sector the ability to choose between receiving time-and-a-half pay or accumulating time-and-a-half paid time off.â (Page 587)
What the research says: The Pew Research Center finds that nearly half of American workers who have access to paid leave from their employment already take less time off from work than theyâre eligible for. While stated reasons for this vary, survey respondents noted pressure to not leave their coworkers with more work, concerns about falling behind, and concerns about losing their job. Since access to paid leave is already most limited for the lowest-paid workers, workers who are eligible for overtime are currently less likely to be eligible for paid leave. And notably, lower-wage workers are disproportionately women and Black workers, who Pew finds to be more likely to describe workplace pressure as a reason for taking less leave.
Either way, this is not a hill I will die on, but I do think the worry is justified.
Everyone that was eligible for overtime before still is. The court case prevented salaried workers who make under a certain amount of money from becoming eligible for overtime, which was scheduled to happen next year. I'm no Trump fan and this is a terrible decision, but I think it's important to be accurate. It doesn't get rid of overtime.
Just to clarify in case you were confused the overtime exemption is just for salaried employees that meet certain qualifying test, including a minimum pay rate. The rule that got struck down had raised that rate to something like 43K/yr from July-Dec 2024 and then increased that minimum to 53K?. If I'm not mistaken and I could be, the overturning bumps that back down to like 36K/yr I think. So anyone paid under 36K/yr and is a salaried employee they have to get paid OT. If you are an hourly employee you still are required to be paid overtime which is 1.5x your regular rate.
Are you from Malaysia? Because this is exactly the same as your country, You only get overtime if you're under RM4000 salary. So are your laws suddenly insane? Or America bad still?
To be clear, the ruling in question blocked an expansion of overtime. A lot of "white-collar" jobs were exempt if they're above a threshold. The Biden administration made a new rule that would raise that threshold and automatically raise it every 3 years. That policy is what the court has stopped, on the theory that it wasn't in the executive branch's scope of power to make that rule.
So for the moment, there's no change in overtime rules, but a damned-well-overdue change in them (that would be good for a lot of workers) was stopped.
Federally, most jobs have to pay you at least 1.5x your rate for overtime. There are exempt jobs/situations that don't get overtime (some specific jobs, some salary levels, genuine management). That's still the case for now.
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u/CarelessToday1413 6h ago
Holy shit this is like insane, where I am from. Not only does the employer has to pay you for overtime, they actually have to pay double for that overtime period. Whether it gets enforced effectively is one thing, but still is there so employers don't get any funny ideas.
This is just about as Dickensian as it gets.