(Washington, June 29, 2015)

President Obama announced in an Op-ed piece in the Huffington post his proposal to replace the federal regulations for mandatory overtime pay for salaried workers. Current regulations, enacted in 2004, require salaried employees to receive overtime if they earn a salary of $23,660 or less.  The newly proposed salary cap for overtime pay proposed by the president is increased to $50,400 per year.

The current overtime threshold only affects about 8% of the Federal workforce, and has not been raised for many years. According to white House estimates, raising the overtime cutoff to $50,400 will affect up to 5 million federal workers. Congressional approval is not needed for this change, since it can be enacted through federal regulation. This proposal is up for public comment through September 4^th, 2015, and is expected to be finalized next year.

Obama has a successful history of changing labor law regulations for Federal employees, largely due to the fact that such changes can be made via executive order or modifications in existing regulations rather than passing a bill through legislative action. Although Obama has indicated multiple times that he is interested in raising the federal minimum wage, no such legislation has successfully been introduced in Congress since the federal minimum wage was last raised to $7.25 per hour in 2007.

You can record a comment on this proposed regulation by going to www.regulations.gov.