Obama making major change to labor laws, likely to impact retail

Started by TheFugitive, June 08, 2015, 10:12:14 AM

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TheFugitive

President Obama is planning to raise the salary threshold at which employers must pay overtime
(time and a half) from $23,660 to $52,000

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/barack-obama-overtime-salary-levels-white-house-118688.html

This is likely to have a major impact on the retail industry, where hiring salaried people with management titles and then having them work a bazillion hours, has long been standard practice.

Been there, done that.  As a salaried manager at Ames, it was very rare for me to have a week where I worked less than 55 hours.  60+ was more typical, and 80 was not at all uncommon during the holiday season.  Break my salary down by hour and I was making far less than minimum wage.  And a lot of what I was doing was frankly grunt work that the company did not want to allocate hourly payroll for.

I would have been extremely grateful if this change would have been made 25 years ago.  It would have had a major impact on my life and family.  And I must admit, part of me is really going to enjoy watching them freak out in retail corporate boardrooms over this.

TheFugitive

Well, the rules have been finalized, and will be taking effect on December 1.

On that date the base salary threshold for being considered non-exempt will rise
from $23,660 to $47, 476.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/pf/overtime-rule-change-paycheck-effects/index.html

The one industry that stands to be most directly impacted is retail.  Guys like me who were salaried management were routinely worked 60+ hours/week with no overtime.  Often in very mundane tasks
like sweeping floors and painting.

This change would have been a tremendous boon to my life when I was in retail management with
young kids.  I either would have made much more money, or had a whole lot more time to spend with them.

How will retail chains react to this change?