Final DOL Overtime Rule Undergoing White House Review

We are sharing this article by Bloomberg Law because this issue is salient to our members as employers. ANCOR has been monitoring and advocating on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) overtime rule under the Trump Administration because wages are a priority issue in disability supports. That is due to the unique Medicaid funding environment within which disability supports function and an ongoing workforce crisis. Although subject to change, ANCOR expects release of the final rule from the White House within 60 days with an announcement of an implementation date likely within 120 days from that.

As written by Bloomberg Law:

“A high-priority Trump Labor Department overtime rule, which takes a more business-friendly approach than attempted in the Obama administration, will be sent to the White House for final review on Aug. 12, according to a senior DOL official.

The regulation is expected to make about 1 million workers newly eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay when working more than 40 hours in a week. It would replace a 2016 rule that never took effect but would’ve given four times more workers new access to overtime wages. The new rule would lift the salary threshold below which workers automatically receive overtime wages to about $35,000, compared with the current level of $23,600 per year. The Obama regulation would’ve doubled the threshold to $47,500.

The department is sending the final draft to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs just five months after proposing the rule, which garnered more than 116,000 public comments. DOL officials have stressed a sense of urgency to complete the rulemaking in time to protect it from a likely legal challenge pressed by worker advocates. The administration wants the rule in place before the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

[…]

Companies throughout the country have remained in limbo for more than five years as to how to make payroll and staffing decisions until they have a firm sense of which workers must be paid time-and-a-half wages.

Meanwhile, Democrats and worker advocates are eager to see the Trump DOL rule so they can finalize legal strategies for taking it down in court. They’re likely to argue that the department violated the Administrative Procedure Act by watering down the prior administration’s effort and depriving more workers of overtime pay without adequate justification.”