Redstate

By Angry Red Posted in User Blogs — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Promoted from the Diaries.

An article today by CNN states that "Revised changes to overtime rules proposed by the Bush administration will still fail to protect overtime pay for six million workers, according to a new study."  This new study was conducted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which receives 29% of its income from labor groups (which do not like the GOP) and has several union leaders on its Board of Directors.  What, in fact, do the proposed overtime rules changes achieve?

Read on.FactCheck.org notes that the Department of Labor (DOL) contends "there would be 1.3 million low-paid workers who would gain the legal right to overtime, outnumbering what it estimated were 644,000 higher-paid, white-collar workers who would lose coverage."  EPI says 6 million will lose OT pay, the DOL says 644,000.  Why the difference?


Some people work OT every week, many do not.  The author of the EPI report confirms that their figures include "part-time workers who don't get overtime pay now because they never work overtime hours. That alone inflates the number by 1.5 million."  The fine point trying to be made by the EPI is this:  The figure provided by the DOL only "counts the loss of current overtime pay, not the loss of the right to receive overtime pay."


But the EPI's figure of 6 million people losing the right to OT pay has no factual basis.  It is a just an estimate by the EPI and further the EPI itself states that it has "been unable to determine the impact of many of the changes with any precision." That's a pretty damn big point to concede, essentially saying they don't know for sure whether 6 million will lose their pay or not.  But gosh it sure does make for good headlines during an election, don't it?


Perhaps that is being too disingenuous.  One fact in this debate is that many workers would gain the right to OT pay: "Under the proposed rules any employee making less than $425 per week would be eligible for overtime benefits, up from the present level of $155, a figure that hasn't been changed since 1975."  The labor-backed EPI says this will give 400,000 workers access to OT pay, the business-backed Employment Policy Foundation says 3.4 million workers would get access.  The Bush admin comes down the middle, saying 1.3 million low-paid workers would get access -- this seems a reasonable figure does it not?


So we know that more low-paid workers will get access to OT, but what about those who will lose the right?  How many, how much and why?  The current OT rules are outdated from the 1940's and thus the present need to rewrite them.  The central principal involved here in the OT rules is "that workers get OT and that high-level executives, administrators and professionals don't. The rules in question define who is in which category."  Most of the workers who will lose the right to OT are white-collar workers.  This makes sense to me as the physical-nature of much blue-collar work makes it a bit more fair for them to receive OT pay versus the service-oriented managerial work that perhaps deserves less OT.  Of course this point is debatable and skirts the fringes of class-warfare, but what is not debatable is that the Bush admin's OT rule changes would help lower-income workers much more than any other group.  "All employees making less than $22,100 annually, as opposed to $8,060 now, would get OT pay" and "a high-earner clause would make it easier for employers to exempt anyone earning $65,000 or more a year."  So the big bad boss is losing his OT pay and some of his workers are gaining the right to OT pay.  In light of this fact it is hard to believe Democrats really have a problem with these rules changes.  The fact that the EPI's "6 million" number has no basis lends credence to the idea that this is all political theater by the labor unions who are supporters of the Democractic party.