Pay threshold for managers to rise to 50K

Don't be naive.

Have you even taken a freshman level econ class?

 

Of course they could also screw that manager out of her overtime and hire another person to handle the additional 20 hours of work that presumably needs to be done. But I sincerely doubt her company is going to cut her pay 50 pct. to make up the difference.

 

Now all they have to do is find a way to enforce the laws on the books about honest time card reporting, not looking the other way etc

 

But even that doesn't "screw" the manager, because he or she will get paid the same amount and work 20 hours less. The manager can devote that time to another job if they need to make more money, or enjoy their lives a little bit more if they're comfortable with their $40k/year.

I doubt it will affect restaurants very much, if at all. They have a certain number of hours per week they need to fill, so maybe they'd have to hire an additional person or two to cover the 20 or 40 hours they need, but the cost to fill that time would be about the same.

Newspapers are where it gets interesting. Since nobody is going to bring in more help, it means those sports editors and one-man band sections are going to have 20 fewer hours in which to fill their sections. You'll likely see them relying more on submitted content, large photos, etc., the stuff that can fill a page without a big drag on time. There will be less reporting (on the news side as well) and more aggregating. The product will suffer. Will that hasten the demise of newspapers? Or are we already so far gone, that it won't matter?

 

Newspapers have abused overtime and other labor regulations forever, mostly by allowing/counting on eager journalists to abuse themselves. Workers are often their own worst enemies with respect to this sort of thing. All the free overtime used to drive me nuts when I was a union rep. The folks who provide free overtime undermine their co-workers.

 

Journalists -- especially writers -- generally like their jobs and like the work. So they are willing to squeeze in covering a game on Saturday as part of their 40-hour week as a polite fiction.

An assistant manager at Aunt Annie's pretzels who makes 26K a year and was expected to often work six days a week on the path to being a manager may not be so eager to show up for free on Saturday.

 

I agree, but those writers working for free because it's fun to cover a game are still doing themselves and their co-workers a disservice.

 

You really believe that manager, whose current 60-hour week commands $26K in cash compensation, will, absent anything other than this regulatory change, continue to make that for a 40-hour workweek? Or that if that manager continues to work a 60-hour workweek, he or she will now be compensated to the tune of $45.5K (which would be $26K for the regular time and $19.5K)? You really believe that?

 

I believe that very, very few business owners will cut managers' salaries because of the new regulation, certainly not nearly enough that this regulation doesn't amount to a huge overall lift for employees making less than $50,000 who had previously been classified as managers to avoid OT pay.

Those business owners who do attempt to cut salaries will risk hurting morale, decreased productivity, losing employees and finding and training new employees, all of which also carry costs.

 

I believe that manager is much more likely to work a five-day week or get overtime. Especially if it's a business where the employees clock in.

 

It depends what the business' profits look like. If we are talking about a business making less profit but still a good one, the manager is going to have to absorb it. If it's the difference between making and losing money, a different decision.

There's also the matter of whether the owner likes the job the manager is doing, and whether he is going to get the same kind of work out of someone at $30K or is better off paying the (already trained) employee $45K.

 

You guys are being foolish. The currently salaried manager is going to be put on an hourly payscale that roughly approximates (factoring in overtime) what his/her total compensation currently is. For the hypothetical $26K a year "manager," his/her hourly wage might go up a bit ... about $7 a week, since he/she currently doesn't make the minimum wage. It's entirely possible that his/her total annual compensation might actually go down, because he/she will actually have to be at work to be earning. But even if the latter is not the case, the idea that firms are going to suddenly pay $45K for what just yesterday was worth (and could easily be acquired at) $26K, absent anything other than a change in overtime rules, is simply silly.