Employers have about two months until new federal overtime rules go into effect unless Congress or courts put a halt to them, but experts are telling Oklahoma companies to plan for the rules, anyway.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt has joined several other states’ attorneys general in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor, and U.S. Sen. James Lankford has introduced a bill to delay the December 1 deadline.
“One of the universities in my state wrote me and said this rule would essentially would turn millions of dollars in professional salaried jobs into hourly positions overnight, resulting in limited flexibility for workers, increased costs for colleges, universities, and other nonprofits and public sector employees that operate under very tight budgets,” Lankford said on the Senate floor last month.
Oklahoma’s junior Republican Senator told The Journal Record’s Dale Denwalt he’s sponsored three bills – one that would stop it completely, another that would modify it, and a third that would delay implementation by six months:
Lankford said the rule has been difficult for business owners to interpret because of how some employees are classified. For example, there is no clear outcome for nurses working in a hospital. “It depends on their exact title and their hours, and their supervision,” said Lankford. “All of those things have to come to account and businesses that are medium in size, it’s very difficult.” Lankford said his bill can be considered in November or December, which means the rule might go into effect before Congress has a chance to delay it.
Oklahoma City-based Paycom’s chief operating officer Stacey Pezold says the attempts may or may not be successful.
She said Paycom recently worked with an employer who would have had to raise salaries by $500,000 to avoid triggering the overtime rule. Instead, she said, the company realized it could reclassify some employees and job duties. “Right now what should be happening is your research and diligence,” she said. “In terms of action, you don’t need to actually implement those salary changes or the reclassification of work up until the Dec. 1 deadline. To the extent that changes, you just take your plan and push it forward.”
The rules govern which salaried employees receive overtime pay, and the changes raise the threshold where overtime kicks in.
If the rules go into effect, people making less than $47,500 can be paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week. The previous threshold was about half that.
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