The Trump administration began accepting public comments Friday on its plan to set the salary threshold for federal overtime rules lower than the Obama administration had proposed.
The plan would raise the cutoff for mandating time-and-a-half pay to $35,000 annually from the current level of $23,000.
Under federal rule-making, the administration must accept comments for 60 days.
The Trump administration’s overtime rule change move has been controversial because the salary threshold is below the $47,000 level it would have been under a rule the Obama administration attempted to adopt. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has repeatedly said in congressional testimony that while the old threshold was too low, the Obama administration’s effort went too far.
The Fair Labor Standards Act says employees must be paid time-and-a-half once they work more than 40 hours in a week. However, businesses may exempt workers from the requirement if their duties are “managerial” in nature and they reach a certain salary threshold. The Obama administration argued the rule was widely abused and attempted to more than double the level in 2016.
Business groups opposed the increase, saying it was too high and would force many businesses to cut back on offering overtime at all. The rule was struck down in federal court, however, and the Trump administration opted to rewrite the rule instead.
“If the Labor Department finalizes its new proposal, millions of workers who should get overtime protections will fall through the cracks,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist during the Obama administration, now with the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.
