Posted on 07/01/2015 6:40:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Should salaried employees have to log their hours? President Obama thinks so. He just proposed regulations requiring salaried employees making less than $50,000 a year to track their work time. Most news coverage has not highlighted this aspect of the new overtime regulations. Unfortunately, they will reduce salaried workers’ flexibility — without raising pay.
Federal law guarantees hourly workers overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week. The regulations currently exempt many salaried employees. Executive, administrative, and professional employees frequently get paid for the work that is done, not the hours that are logged.
These employees get a flat salary no matter how many hours they put in. In exchange, they get flexibility in where and when they work. For example, millions of salaried employees work part-time from home. Many others can leave work early in the afternoon, provided they get their tasks done.
This flexibility makes balancing work and family life easier. Many salaried employees can make their child’s soccer game or take care of a sick kid without losing paid hours. They just do that work at a different time.
Regulations intended to raise wages will instead make juggling work and family life more difficult. Surveys show workers with this flexibility like their jobs more. They are also more productive and less likely to quit. Flexible schedules benefit both employees and employers.
So why would the federal government restrict them for salaried employees making less than $50,000 a year?
The Obama administration touts its new overtime regulations as a way to boost pay. Sadly, they will not have this effect. Economists have thoroughly studied how employers react to overtime laws. They find that employers inevitably cut base wages to offset the extra costs such laws impose.
Research shows that employers and employees care deeply about total number of hours worked and total pay. They care much less about pay for individual hours. When the government requires overtime, employers do not pay more for the same work. They pay overtime and cut base pay by an equivalent amount — leaving the total employment package unchanged.
This is exactly what happened when Japan’s courts recently expanded overtime eligibility. Japanese businesses cut their employees’ pay by an amount equal to the expected overtime. Total earnings did not change.
Study after study comes to this conclusion. Even liberal economists agree. Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, recently wrote that the “costs of increased coverage would ultimately be borne by workers as employers set base wages taking expected overtime pay into account.”
While the overtime regulations will not raise total pay, they will force businesses to track the hours of salaried employees making less than $50,000 a year. Even if those employees do not work more than 40 hours a week, businesses still have to track their hours to prove it.
This will strongly discourage employers from giving these employees flexible schedules. Businesses can easily track hours that are worked in the office. It is much harder to track hours worked at home. But if they don’t, they risk getting sued. Trial lawyers have brought thousands of suits against companies for improperly tracking hours worked remotely.
Businesses have responded by sharply limiting workplace flexibility for employees eligible for overtime. As the head of human resources for Pitney Bowes explained, the company turned down overtime-eligible employees’ requests to work from home because: “You just don’t take the [legal] risk.”
Of course, many salaried employees make more than this threshold; the regulations won’t affect them. But across the country, and especially in places with lower costs of living, many entry- and mid-level salaried employees will soon have to track their hours. This will mean losing flexibility over when and where they work. Regulations intended to raise wages will instead make juggling work and family life more difficult.
—James Sherk is a research fellow in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation.
Wow. This nitwit does not understand why people are salaried instead of hourly workers. A complete economic idiot.
Man if we can make this retroactive I’m gonna be one rich SOB. LOL! In the 36 years of my career, there wasn’t a single year that we didn’t do at least 2,200 hrs and as high as 3,000 hrs. So, if a normal work year is 2,080 hrs, you can see where I might be in for a windfall. Good thing I ain’t holding my breath. :>}
It’s what I like to call the “Queuing Response.” What this does is condition the individual to get use to the way the “utopian” society truly functions. It takes the individual and puts him in a box, whereby his movements are easily governed.
Look at the old Soviet Union and places the left rules today. Everyone is in a queue. Want to buy something, get in line. Want to attend an event, get in line. Anything that forces the individual to do something which limits him.
This is what the TSA was meant to do. It forced us travelers (who are more middle/upper class) to stand in line for something that had no practical use except to inconvenience us. One psychology major could have fixed this. Filling out time cards for exempt employees now will limit movement, metaphorically speaking. It again, puts people in a box and conditions them to accept these types of activities.
That’s my dos centavos.
Quinn’s First Law: Liberalism always produces the exact opposite of its stated intent.
That policy has been in effect for government contractors for years and does not stop what he intends. Employers simply don’t let workers log more than 40 hours without prior approval. They still expect employees to do whatever is needed to satisfy the customer, even if that is working free time or at best overtime at regular pay. If the government can’t enforce it for their own contractors, how will they enforce it for all?
He doesn't.
No one will stop him, but he doesn't.
This one is easy.
Write in 8 hours a day.
Problem solved.
Congress creates the labor board, SCOTUS upholds federal wage regulations as constitutional. Simple as that.
Or do like AMTRAK employees, write in 25 hours a day.
It will be a felony to lie and they will track your location by cell phone.
It will be a felony to lie and they will track your location by cell phone.
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First of all, if your pay is based on the 40 hour work week and you work 40 hours, it is no lie.
Secondly, ROFLOL!
Or do like AMTRAK employees, write in 25 hours a day.
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Libs can’t even lie convincingly, but they get away with it anyway.
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