OT fight is hardly a labor of love

With the war over overtime not nearly over in Washington, D.C., a second front will likely open next year in Olympia.

The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday will implement a sweeping revision of 50-year-old regulations that determine who gets paid overtime for working more than 40 hours per week. Millions of workers will be affected. Debate over just how many, and how, has preoccupied labor groups and Bush administration officials for months. The department estimates 6.7 million workers will qualify for coverage, or get enhanced protections, with a potential cost to employers of $375 million a year. The AFL-CIO says six million workers will lose overtime protection. As far as organized labor is concerned, about the only the change worth keeping is the requirement that any salaried worker earning less than $23,660 automatically gets overtime. The current threshold is a measly $8,060.

The exchange of claims and counterclaims has probably kept several paper mill workers in jobs the last few months. Wednesday, the department issued a 12-page, point-by-point response to AFL-CIO “distortions,” and three other documents besides.

The issue is so politically sensitive the House and Senate approved appropriations bill amendments that would have guaranteed that anyone who receives overtime now would continue to qualify in the future no matter the changes made by the Labor Department. The provision disappeared in the final version of the bill. But labor supporters expect to get the amendment attached to two more pending bills, which will force opponents to take a politically difficult stand just weeks before the election.

“The issue is just going to become more controversial,” AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel says, adding that the president could well veto either bill if the amendment remains attached.

Meanwhile, the rules are going to take effect, and Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law says the Labor Department has done more outreach than ever before to explain the nuances — with 500-plus pages, you get plenty of nuances — to employer groups. But digesting all that material may be especially difficult for businesses in Washington, which has its own set of overtime regulations largely patterned after the expiring federal standards.

When deciding which of the two sets of rules apply in a particular situation, they must choose those most favorable to the employee. For example, the federal regulations will exempt from overtime a white-collar worker earning more than $100,000 and performing as little as one day of executive, administrative or professional work. In Washington, that employee will continue to get overtime. The federal requirements will prevail in some cases, notably where that $23,600 threshold comes into play.

Despite the potential for confusion among employers about which set of standards might apply, officials for the Association of Washington Business and state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business say members have so far expressed no concern about the problem. The Washington State Labor Council suggests businesses stick with the state standards they know because they will apply in most cases anyway.

But if the new federal regulations survive Congressional attempts to overturn them, business groups may renew their effort to get Olympia on the same page with Washington, D.C. A bill introduced in 2003 that would have brought Washington’s minimum wage into line with lower federal levels would also have given employers some legal protections if they ended up in the no-man’s land between federal and state overtime regulations. It passed in the Republican-controlled Senate, but never came to a vote in the House. The AWB is looking at reviving some version of that overtime language.

To help employers and employees sort things out in the meantime, the Labor Department and Washington Department of Labor & Industries have created Web pages with overwhelming amounts of information. The address for the federal site is www.dol.gov/fairpay. The state site can be found at www.Wages.LNI.wa.gov. Today, the AFL-CIO chimes in with www.workingamerica.org.

Just try to get all that reading done in a 40-hour week.