David Obey: “Mr. Speaker, the House bill does not contain and the Senate Labor HHS bill does contain an important provision which…”

“Mr. Speaker, the House bill does not contain and the Senate Labor HHS bill does contain an important provision which affects millions of American workers. That provision would preclude the Department of Labor from issuing any regulation that takes away overtime protection from workers who currently qualify for that protection. It would protect rights that workers in this country have had since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Under the Senate provision, the Department of Labor could proceed with its ongoing rulemaking process and modify the overtime regulations. Example: The department could proceed with making a long-overdue inflation adjustment that guarantees overtime protection for certain low-income workers earning $22,100 a year. The Department of Labor says that this will result in an additional 1.3 million workers receiving overtime. I do not know if that estimate is right, but we agree with this provision. We, in fact, think that it would add far fewer number of workers than does the Department of Labor. The only shortcoming we see with it is that it does not go far enough and does not even keep pace with inflation, full adjustment to match inflation would require the department to increase the salary threshold in the rule to at least $27,560.”