Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog
If you are working over forty hours a week and are not currently eligible for overtime pay or wages, you may be in luck. The Department of Labor and the Obama administration are on the verge of changing an overtime pay rule that would raise the current overtime threshold of $23,660 per year to $50,440 per year. This would extend overtime pay to millions of American employees. If you feel that you have wrongly denied overtime pay, you should speak to a Tennessee overtime pay and employment lawyer with the Higgins Firm. We will fight for you to help you get the compensation that is rightfully yours.
Currently, the law states that any salaried worker who earns below the threshold must receive overtime. The current threshold of $23,660, or $455 per week, lies below the poverty line for a family of four. The new rule would raise that to $50,440 or $970 per week, which would be closer to the median household income. This rule change would mean that more American workers would qualify for overtime pay. The current overtime threshold is not indexed for inflation and only been updated once since 1975. It only covers twelve percent of salaried employees. If the threshold is raised it would bring it back in line with the 1975 threshold, after inflation.
The current rules for overtime pay exclude white collar workers with titles such as “executive, administrative and professional” from receiving overtime pay. This means that an office worker or secretary might be exempt from overtime pay. Many businesses and companies get around paying their employees overtime pay by giving them nominal supervisory responsibilities. Although the Department of Labor had stated the new rule would make changes to this definition allowing more workers to qualify for overtime pay benefits, the proposed regulation did not include this change.
