The Bush Administration's Labor Department and You Score: Employers 1 Peons 0

Labor Department offers employers tips to avoid overtime pay

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms, which Labor Secretary Elaine Chao called long overdue.

Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.

The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.

Most excellent! There's more!

Employers' options include:

Adhering to a 40-hour work week.

Raising workers' salaries to a new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay.
If employers raise a worker's salary "it means they're getting a raise -- that's not a way around overtime," Frank said. The current threshold is $8,060 per year.

Making a "payroll adjustment" that results "in virtually no, or only a minimal increase in labor costs," the department said. Workers' annual pay would be converted to an hourly rate and cut, with overtime added in to equal the former salary.
Essentially, employees would be working more hours for the same pay.

The department does not view the "payroll adjustment" option as a pay cut. Rather, it allows the employer to "maintain the pay at the current level" with the new overtime requirements, said the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division administrator, Tammy McCutchen, an architect of the plan. More Compassionate Conservatism™ at link.

I don't see how ANYONE could see this as a boon to employees, and a blow to employers.(heavy sarcasm) This is really good policy for the Bush Administration in an election year. About the only thing that Americans fear more than terrorism is the government actively f***ing with their paychecks. I hope that this gets major airtime. It's one issue that really effects millions.