Obama wants to give overtime pay to 5 million more Americans
Ever been told salaried workers can’t earn overtime? That’s not exactly true.
Salaried workers who make less than $23,660 per year are eligible for overtime, and, if President Barack Obama has his way, so will five million more Americans.
In an op-ed he penned for the Huffington Post, Obama proposed a new jobs plan that would expand overtime pay to salaried workers making up to $50,400.
“We’ve failed to update overtime regulations for years — and an exemption meant for highly paid, white collar employees now leaves out workers making as little as $23,660 a year — no matter how many hours they work,’’ the president wrote.
Updating the standards would put the wage increase in line with inflation, which has risen drastically since the salary requirement was first implemented in 1975.
“I had Dunkin’ Donuts to be my number one family instead of my own family,’’ Gassan Marzuq, a Dunkin’ Donuts manager who works up to 90-hour weeks without overtime pay told The Boston Globe. “So I really don’t know my kids, and they don’t know me.’’
Dunkin’ Donuts told The Globe that the location Marzuq manages in Kingston, Rhode Island, is an independently operated franchise, and that the store owners decide whether or not to provide overtime pay.
The salary threshold for overtime exemption was last revised in 2004, when President George W. Bush raised in from $250 to $455 per week. In 2014, critics at the American Federation of Labor called that figure “ridiculously low.’’
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