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

[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?