It is good news for workers that Texas Judge Mazzant III, an appointee of President Obama, granted an emergency injunction against the Labor Department’s overtime rule, set to go into effect on December 1. The rule required all workers earning up to $47,476 to track their hours and be paid for overtime, even if they were executive, administrative, and professional, previously exempt from overtime pay. In his opinion Judge Mazzant called the overtime rule “unlawful” and “contrary to the statute and Congress’s intent.”
As well as increasing the complexity of hiring for employers, the new rule would have hurt workers who value job flexibility. This is because workers who must be paid overtime cannot be on salary, but have to fill out time sheets and keep track of every hour they work. They cannot receive comp time — time off in exchange for extra hours worked. If they work Saturdays and Sundays, they have to be paid overtime — they cannot take Monday and Tuesday off in exchange. If they are paid only for the hours they actually work, they lose money every time they need to leave work early. This especially affects working mothers, who might want to take time to care for a sick child or attend a school sporting event.
Let us hope that the Trump administration repeals the rule in its entirety.
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Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.