June 09, 2017
VNPP has had the issue of the Department of Labor’s revised rule on who was eligible for overtime on our Legislative Agenda for the past two Sessions; as written, the annual salary level which to a large part would determine eligibility was raised from $23,660 to $47,476. This put many of our mid-level supervisors and others into the OT Eligible category and, therefore, increased our costs by considerable measure. The rule had been temporarily stayed by federal court and the appeal, filed near the end of the Obama administration has been continued until June 30 at the request of DOL under the new administration.
Now that a new Secretary of Labor has been confirmed, we are likely to see some movement; Secretary Acosta recently announced that DOL would release an RFI on the rule in the next few weeks. An RFI is a way to solicit information and opinion. The current suggestion is that the salary level would be raised from $23,660 to ~$33,000; a figure which is much closer to what VNPP and our national partners at ANCOR had suggested.
For the moment, however, the OT Rule is still on hold.