A blow to workers and organized labor was dealt on Thursday when a federal judge in Texas struck down an Obama administration rule that would have given mandatory overtime pay to more than four million workers. Citing that the Labor Department had incorrectly looked at salaries instead of job duties when working on the rule, the judge came down on the side of big business and 21 states that had challenged it.
The rule would have doubled to about $47,000 the maximum salary a worker could earn and still be automatically eligible for overtime pay.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant in Sherman, Texas, said the salary level was set so high that it could sweep in some management workers who are supposed to be exempt from overtime protections.
This decision reflects the continued tension in America around workers’ rights and capitalism. Employers want to be able to make large profits but so many do so at the cost of exploiting workers. The big companies want the labor, but they don’t want to pay for it. They call any attempt to regulate them and make them pay fair wages “anti-business.” Currently, employers are required to pay overtime to salaried employees if they make less than $23,660. That’s not exactly a whole lot of money to live on—especially if you are supporting more than one person. And it excluded many workers. To that end, supporters of the Obama era rule argued that the current requirement was too limited in its scope. However, the restaurant and manufacturing industries are quite pleased with this decision.
The ruling also drew immediate praise from business groups. The National Restaurant Association in a statement said the Obama administration had overstepped its authority in adopting the rule. The group said it would work with the Trump administration “to ensure workable changes to the overtime rule are enacted.”
But the union-backed National Employment Law Project said the judge ignored that the U.S. Department of Labor spent two years working on the rule and reviewed nearly 300,000 public comments before adopting it.
In a Clinton presidency, this most surely would have been challenged. But the Trump administration knows this kind of pro-big business decision is like milk and honey for its base. So this decision won’t likely be overturned anytime soon and now over 4 million workers will lose out.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2eqyklz
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment