Fewer and fewer Americans are getting overtime pay, and it's not because they're not working overtime. Rather, the rules that determine who gets overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week have become outdated. Salaried workers are only eligible for overtime pay if they earn less than $455 a week, just
$2 a week above the poverty threshold for a family of four. President Obama is talking about raising the overtime eligibility level, and if he set it to be equal to what it was in 1975, adjusted for inflation, it would be $970 a week rather than $455.
But Obama hasn't acted yet, and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer recently wrote that "It is my sense, based on my conversations with government officials, that the administration is buying the line from corporate lobbyists who are arguing that such rule changes would devastate their bottom lines, forcing them to lay off workers." Hanauer argues that the reality is that it would just force corporations to stockpile a little less cash, do fewer stock buybacks, go back to the profit levels they had between 1950 and 1980.
If you're a salaried worker who ever works more than 40 hours a week and earns between $24,000 and $50,000 or even more, you're likely being robbed of overtime pay by the erosion of the eligibility standards. Others of you are being kept from being paid overtime by a series of exemptions that businesses are constantly pushing to expand. This is, as Hanauer details, a perfect example of how corporations use their leverage with government to keep middle-class incomes low. It's time for the president to give middle-class workers a raise.
Join Daily Kos in asking President Obama to provide the same fair overtime protections for today’s middle class that were once enjoyed by our parents.