House Republicans Vote to Cut Workers' Pay

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes, HM's link spells it out.

[Beestie]

From the partisan and biased source (not even a left-leaning paper but the democrat spin machine itself) linked above:

However, the Bush administration has increased the salary threshhold (the salary below which overtime compensation is guaranteed) from $155 per week to $455 per week.

This change will INCREASE the number of employees eligible for overtime by 1.3 Million workers. 1.3 Million workers. That's 1.3 Million workers who will now be eligible for overtime that were not eligible for overtime before the Bush administration made them eligible for overtime.

The dems claim that this number (1.3M), the one change that increases the number of eligible workers is vastly and tremendously overstated while asserting that all of their (the dems) numbers are dead-on accurate if not conservative (no pun intended).

Overtime rules are a clusterF***ing mess and no one knows how many people will fall in and out of the newly defined protected classes. But, focusing only on those who fall out while paying short shrift to the newly included makes for good election year politics.

[xoxoxoBruce]

+1.3 million -6 million = net -4.7 million. I don't like the math.
I wouldn't expect anything Bush backs to favor people over business.

[Kitsune]

I don't like the math.

I know my employer does.

[lookout123]

i'll have to dig some more to see how much this really changes things, but at first glance i don't really see that big of a difference. the increase in the salary test is a positive but even that is being spun as a negative on the link. from what i see, some of what the dems are calling take-aways are not, at least not from the current law. they are take-aways from the initial proposals that were made for change. that is the same thing that the dems did with advertising on bush's "stripping away money from PA education" - the funds were increased year over year, but not to the extent that was wanted.
in my previous life as a hiring manager, i can tell you that overtime laws are different state to state anyway. all this law does is set the minimum benchmark. CA, for instance, has extremely aggressive OT laws; if you have a pulse and are there for more than 8 hours, it's time and a half.
anyway - it's obvious there will be some negatives in here, but the sky isn't falling and life won't really change that much.