Obama Will Seek Broad Expansion of Overtime Pay
Source: NY Times
WASHINGTON — President Obama this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated.
On Thursday, the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as “executive or professional” employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement.
Mr. Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to change the nation’s overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president’s economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25.
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Since the mid-1980s, corporate profits have soared, reaching a post-World War II record as a share of economic output. The profits of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 have doubled since the recession ended in June 2009, but wages have stagnated for a vast majority of workers in the same period. Recently, workers’ wages fell close to an all-time low as a share of the economy.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/politics/obama-will-seek-broad-expansion-of-overtime-pay.html?emc=edit_th_20140312&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=36371920&_r=0
There's so much good information in this article, I wish I could post more than 4 paragraphs. Definitely worth a read.
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They totally suck too. Until it happens to them and then they cross over and agree with you. That's when I want to slap 'em. 
Those nasty repukes will try to scuttle it. 
Such exhaustion of workers also leads to less participation in society, as the workers are not able do anything off the job. Even voting is affected. If you scarely know when you are coming or going, it's the bottom of your list unless you are thoroughly informed on who is screwing you. The way people live, they don't have enough time to think about it
The other thing is just ending the bullshitting about titles that make some workers think they are better from others. This is a way of unifying society. It respects the individual and their time, which when all is said and done, is all that our lives are, a succession of hours and days and so on. What we can achieve with decent conditions will bring us back to a more sane society
Unions used to perform this function, now Obama is doing it for the non-union workforce as well. I was in a union where we negotiated a contract that went even further on overtime than the federal laws covered. They'd been working people for several days in a row, night and day, because the work was an essential service.
The company didn't want to hire anyone, because the law had come down on them and said they had to hire a more diverse work group. Women, gays, latinos and blacks were to be added to jobs previously all held by white males. The company had a quota, and tried to hire over half the new workers they needed from the white male pool.
As they year went, down the societal totem pole they went: latino males, black males, white women and finally minority women. The old 'last hired and first fired' routine.
Gays were added per race and gender. Rules were posted barring any discrimination or harrassment against any group and forbidding a hostile work environment for anyone. It was a great place to work for a long time.
(((And please, from what I saw of how those quotas were fulfilled, still protecting the dominant group. Cry me a river if you don't like quotas. I heard so much of that at that time and it created Reagan Democrats. No one was allowed to stay in the job if they couldn't carry their load, Period.)))
But despite the shenanigans, they were forced to hire more people end the way they were abusing overtime. We didn't have a load of titles that meant a person worked off the clock and was supposed to be the boss's pet. It was all on the clock, no matter what job it was, clerical, accounting, computer work, drafting, construction, transportation, whatever. No fooling around.
Obama is standing up for workers against corporations, but we knew that, just as 22 million union members knew:
We know the Koch brothers will be bankrolling the GOP to combat this. The battle is on.
