The Arrogance of Regulators: Department of Labor Edition
Well, they did it. The Obama Administration has proposed a new rule that everyone has to punch a time clock unless they are paid at least $921 a week. Here is the proposed rule. Of course, everyone on the Left is patting themselves on the back for giving everyone under that number a raise. In fact what has happened is that everyone under that number just got a demotion, from trusted junior manager to 40-hour-a-week timeclock puncher.
Here is another way to put it: The only people who now have the right to work more than the minimum to demonstrate one's readiness for more responsibility are those paid over $48,000 a year. McKinsey consultants and lawyers and investment bankers can choose to work extra hours in order to gain promotions. McDonald's shift managers no longer have that same right. This is a law written by salaried professionals telling younger and lower-paid workers that they have no right to be ... salaried professionals. This is a law propounded by a President who pays many of the young professional interns in his campaign and non-profit $0.00 an hour.
Update: By the DOL's own reckoning, 40% of salaried employees fall below this number and thus are affected. Some will get a small raise over the bar, but an enormous part of the workforce will find themselves dumped into the ranks of work-just-the-minimum timecard punchers. This has the potential to hit far more people than any minimum wage increase.
Mike Powers:
"The only people who now have the right to work more than the minimum to demonstrate one's readiness for more responsibility..."
uh, that's the punchline from a Dilbert comic, dude. If "works extra unpaid hours" is the way you identify responsibility, then you're rewarding inefficient people who can't get their work done in the time allotted.
July 14, 2015, 12:03 pm