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overtime protections
5 Ways Trump's Labor Secretary Pick Can Prove She's Really Pro-Worker
If workers truly have an ally in Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives.
Nov 27, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump recently announced his nomination of Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as secretary of labor.
She is one of only three House Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of only eight Republicans to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Both bills would help reform our nation’s badly broken system of labor law. While Rep. Chavez-DeRemer’s support for these needed reforms is encouraging, if confirmed, she will be secretary of labor for a president who steadfastly pursued an ambitious anti-worker agenda during his first term in office.
Chavez-DeRemer has stated that “working-class Americans finally have a lifeline” with President-elect Trump in the White House. If workers truly have an ally in Chavez-DeRemer, she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives. Here are a few policies that will reveal whether the second Trump administration will actually aid working-class Americans or be a continuation of his first administration’s agenda attacking workers’ rights.
If confirmed as secretary of labor, Chavez-DeRemer should not follow the playbook of Trump’s first administration that used populist pro-worker rhetoric while advancing an anti-worker agenda that proved deeply harmful to U.S. workers.
Win funding for the Department of Labor (DOL) that enables the agency to serve the U.S. workforce:DOL and other worker protection agencies have been chronically underfunded. As the workforce has grown, the budgets of these agencies have shrunk, leaving workers without effective enforcement of basic minimum wage and overtime and health and safety protections. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for and secure at least a $14 billion budget to ensure that U.S. workers have health and safety inspectors and wage and hour investigators on the job to enforce their rights.
Protect workers’ overtime: Overtime pay ensures that most workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work. Most hourly workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, while salaried workers’ eligibility is based on their pay and the nature of their duties. DOL recently issued a rule to raise the pay threshold for salaried workers to be eligible for overtime, which stands to benefit 4.3 million workers. Despite this benefit to U.S. workers, corporate interest groups and conservative states challenged the rule in court. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for workers’ right to overtime and continue to defend this rule in litigation. She should not allow the Trump administration to, once again, institute a low-salary threshold for overtime eligibility that leaves millions of workers without these protections and forced to work long hours for no additional pay.
Refuse to reinstitute the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program: This program was instituted during Trump’s first administration and essentially permits employers who have stolen workers’ wages to confess and get out of jail free. If an employer proactively notified DOL of the failure to pay minimum wage or overtime or for taking illegal deductions from workers’ paychecks, then DOL waived all penalties and liquidated damages. Wage theft is rampant, costing U.S. workers as much as $50 billion each year. Any program that makes it easier and less costly for employers to steal workers’ wages is a program that hurts U.S. workers and their wages. Chavez-DeRemer should make it harder for employers to steal workers’ wages, not easier.
Promote policies to protect workers’ health and safety: DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for ensuring U.S. workers are safe on the job. Still, 344 workers die each day from hazardous working conditions. Under the prior Trump administration, OSHA scaled back safety inspections. Chavez-DeRemer should ensure that OSHA does not repeat this under her watch and instead expands inspections to ensure that all workers have a safe workplace. Further, she should fight to protect safety standards like the recently proposed standard protecting workers from extreme heat. Workers’ health and safety must be a priority for any secretary of labor and administration claiming to be pro-worker.
Hold employers accountable for exploiting workers: Some employers use workers’ immigration status as leverage to exploit workers, threatening them with deportation if they report violations of labor and employment laws. For workers in labor disputes, the current administration granted deferred action, which is a determination to defer removal (deportation) of an individual from the U.S. In order to qualify for deferred action, a worker’s employer must be the subject of an open investigation at a labor agency, like DOL, and the labor agency conducting the investigation must submit a letter supporting deferred action to the Department of Homeland Security which oversees the program. Deferred action helps hold lawbreaking employers accountable, and Chavez-DeRemer should continue to support this for workers whose employers are being investigated for violating the law. If she is confirmed, she should fight to ensure the Trump administration provides deferred action for workers whose rights have been violated and should work to issue letters in support of deferred action for eligible workers.
These are just a few actions Chavez-DeRemer could take to demonstrate her commitment to workers. If confirmed as secretary of labor, Chavez-DeRemer should not follow the playbook of Trump’s first administration that used populist pro-worker rhetoric while advancing an anti-worker agenda that proved deeply harmful to U.S. workers.
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Biden Labor Department Finalizes Pro-Worker Rules on Overtime, Retirement Savings
"Democrats are delivering for working people!" declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal as the AFL-CIO noted that GOP ex-President Donald Trump "gutted the rules that required overtime pay for millions of workers."
Apr 23, 2024
Roughly 4.3 million U.S. workers will now be eligible for overtime pay under a new rule finalized Tuesday by President Joe Biden's Labor Department—in stark contrast to his Republican predecessor's rules that severely limited the number of workers who were eligible for required compensation when they worked more than 40 hours per week.
Under the new rule, employers will be required to pay overtime premiums to salaried workers who work more than standard full-time hours if they earn less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year.
Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, may now have to defend his 2020 rule that set the overtime pay threshold at just $35,500 per year, leaving out millions of workers.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted that the updated rule was "a major piece" of the Executive Action Agenda released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which she chairs.
"This is a HUGE pro-worker initiative by President Biden," said Jayapal. "Democrats are delivering for working people!"
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, who Biden has nominated to fill the role permanently, said it is "unacceptable" that lower-paid workers "are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay," while hourly workers are eligible for overtime pay.
"This rule will restore the promise to workers that if you work more than 40 hours in a week, you should be paid more for that time," said Su. "The Biden-Harris administration is following through on our promise to raise the bar for workers who help lay the foundation for our economic prosperity."
The Labor Department posted a chart on social media showing how under Trump's policy, only workers who earn less than $688 per week are eligible for required overtime pay. The full rule is set to go into effect in January 2025.
The chart offers a "good split screen with the GOP," saidSlate reporter Mark Joseph Stern.
"It isn't just that Trump's Department of Labor fought overtime pay—it's also that Trump appointed anti-labor judges who are about to block Biden's new rule," he said.
The former Republican president's appointed judges could also block a new Federal Trade Commission rule introduced on Tuesday, which blocks companies from including noncompete clauses in workers' contracts.
"Both reforms happened because of Biden and in spite of Republicans," said HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson.
Along with the overtime rule, the Labor Department announced a new policy aimed at safeguarding people's retirement savings from their financial advisers' conflicts of interest.
The finalized retirement security rule requires "trusted investment advice providers to give prudent, loyal, honest advice free from overcharges," said the department. "These fiduciaries must adhere to high standards of care and loyalty when they recommend investments and avoid recommendations that favor the investment advice providers' interests—financial or otherwise—at the retirement savers' expense."
"Under the final rule and amended exemptions, financial institutions overseeing investment advice providers must have policies and procedures to manage conflicts of interest and ensure providers follow these guidelines," the agency said.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said the nation's largest labor federation has "been pushing for the fiduciary and overtime rules since the Obama administration."
"It's really this simple," said Shuler. "Every worker deserves their fair share of the wealth they help create and every worker deserves to make sure their hard-earned money is secure."
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Biden Admin Proposes 'Much-Needed' Overtime Protections for 3.6 Million Workers
While welcoming the move, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus also urged the president to "not to consider the job done with this proposed rule, and pursue a relentless commitment to fair overtime pay."
Aug 30, 2023
Labor rights advocates within and beyond Congress celebrated on Wednesday after the Biden administration proposed a federal rule to restore and extend overtime protections to 3.6 million more salaried workers earning up to about $55,000 a year.
"For over 80 years, a cornerstone of workers' rights in this country is the right to a 40-hour workweek, the promise that you get to go home after 40 hours or you get higher pay for each extra hour that you spend laboring away from your loved ones," said Julie Su, who is acting secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) because her nomination is stalled in the U.S. Senate.
"I've heard from workers again and again about working long hours, for no extra pay, all while earning low salaries that don't come anywhere close to compensating them for their sacrifices," she said. "Today, the Biden-Harris administration is proposing a rule that would help restore workers' economic security by giving millions more salaried workers the right to overtime protections if they earn less than $55,000 a year. Workers deserve to continue to share in the economic prosperity of Bidenomics."
Informed by 27 listening sessions, the rule would ensure most salaried workers earning less than $1,059 per week get overtime pay after 40 hours; clarify which administrative, executive, or professional employees should be overtime exempt; automatically update the salary threshold every three years in line with earnings data; and restore overtime protections for U.S. territories.
"This proposal is a crucial step in creating a stronger, fairer economy."
"Once again, the Biden administration is listening to workers' voices by taking these much-needed steps to strengthen overtime protections," declared Rebecca Dixon, president and CEO of the National Employment Law Project. "Ensuring this proposed rule is finalized and implemented as soon as possible is essential because workers don't deserve to wait any longer for the benefits this rule will provide."
Economic Policy Institute president Heidi Shierholz—a former DOL chief economist—similarly praised the proposal, saying that "EPI is encouraged to see this important regulation move forward. The overtime threshold has not been properly updated for nearly 50 years, robbing millions of workers of their basic wage and hour rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act."
"Currently, a worker making just $36,000 a year can be required to work 50- or 60-hour workweeks with no additional pay," she noted. "This proposal would ensure that employers have 'skin in the game' when they ask these workers to work long hours. As a result, these workers will either get those extra hours back or they will get higher wages when they do work long hours—whether through salary increases or by earning time-and-a-half overtime pay. This proposal is a crucial step in creating a stronger, fairer economy."
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also applauded the DOL's move to "advance this key pillar of worker justice" while stressing that "it doesn't go far enough," leaving "too many behind when a larger increase to the threshold could give millions more families breathing room in their budgets at a time when they desperately need it."
The congresswoman highlighted the CPC's "long history of advocating for bold action" under then-President Barack Obama in 2014, 2015, and 2016, as well as in the caucus' 2022 and 2023 executive action agendas under Biden, who was Obama's vice president.
"Our caucus understands this is about basic fairness: People should be paid for every hour they work," Jayapal emphasized. "It is also about economic justice: Workers should not be forced to donate their time over 40 hours per week to their employers, especially for those who work at wealthy corporations that are raking in record profits."
“The CPC called for the overtime threshold to be raised to $80,000 per year, which would cover 55% of workers at one-and-a-half times their regular pay—and grant fair pay to 26 million new workers," she added. "We urge President Biden not to consider the job done with this proposed rule, and pursue a relentless commitment to fair overtime pay, which would be a powerful demonstration of his pro-worker commitment. We cannot rest until we've exhausted every option to ease the burden on working- and middle-class people."
The current threshold of $35,568 was previously raised from $23,660 in 2019 under then-President Donald Trump—the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. With only a few longshot Democratic challengers, Biden is expected to face the Republican nominee next year.
The Associated Pressreported Wednesday that "the new rule could face pushback from business groups that mounted a successful legal challenge against similar regulation that Biden announced as vice president during the Obama administration, when he sought to raise the threshold to more than $47,000."
Publication of the administration's notice of proposed rulemaking kicks off a 60-day public comment period. Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator at the DOL's Wage and Hour Division, said Wednesday that "public input is essential as we consider the needs of today's workforce and industry demands, and we encourage continued stakeholder input during the public comment period."
"We are committed to ensuring that all workers are paid fairly for their hard work," she said. "For too long, many low-paid salaried workers have been denied overtime pay, even though they often work long hours and perform much of the same work as their hourly counterparts. This proposed rule would ensure that more workers receive extra pay when they work long hours."
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