Bosses win, workers lose
Trump is a hero to the working class!!
Yeah right.
The New Republic has the details:
You probably missed it, because it created barely a ripple in the media, but last Friday, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump struck down one of President Biden’s most pro-worker policies: his effort to ensure that far more Americans benefit from overtime pay. Around four million salaried workers with lower incomes are the losers in this decision, yet it generated startlingly few news stories and no outraged missives from leading columnists.
Well, look, it’s only money. Journalists and columnists focus on Higher Things.
[Biden’s] administrative rule, proposed last year, would raise the existing income threshold for many workers to qualify for extra pay for hours beyond the 40-hour week under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Right now, that threshold is only around $35,000 per year. The rule would raise it to around $58,000.
Around four million additional people would qualify for overtime protections under this change. These are people who make more than $35,000 but less than $58,000 per year, but don’t currently qualify for overtime; to oversimplify, bosses have reclassified many of these workers as managers, exempting them from federal overtime protections.
The Biden rule would make them eligible: According to Labor Department spokesman Jesse Lawder, this group includes hundreds of thousands of people who do many types of manufacturing work as well as those holding low-to-medium-level positions in everything from retail and fast-food franchises to construction.
Well…ok…but let’s face it, that’s boring. It’s not sexy and enthralling like Trans Rights Melodrama, it’s just a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little bit of money; don’t you know that?
Guess who managed to block this rule that would have provided those people with relief? MAGA Republicans allied with business interests, that’s who.
The lawsuit that succeeded combined two suits—one launched by Trumpy Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the other by a consortium of business groups. While the business coalition appears broad, it includes big players. We’re talking about the National Federation of Independent Business, which gave over $500,000 to GOP candidates (and a pittance to Democrats) last cycle; the International Franchise Association, whose board includes executives from fast-food behemoths like McDonald’s; and the National Retail Federation, whose board boasts representatives from giants like Walmart and Target.
Exactly: the real salt of the earth, not like those fancy liberals with their vegetable shoes and their cars that run on coconut oil.
If they felt the need to spin it, Republicans could sell this to people who wouldn’t benefit from it as part of the effort to “keep prices down.” I wonder how many of the people who are being screwed over by this voted for Trump? And out of those, how many won’t see this as being his fault?
And if they tried to unionize, Trump’s appointees would manage to kill that, too. I made considerably better than $35,000 when I was working, but because we had a union contract, we got overtime if they required us to work over a set workload. Their usual response was to make sure we stayed below that workload, but hey, not working to death is also desirable. Of course, the way they set schedules, it meant we would have to work on our own time to prep classes and grade, but since they weren’t ‘requiring’ it of us, we were doing it by ‘choice’, that would be no overtime.
Bosses win every way, don’t they?