Alan Hughes: Expansion Of Overtime Will Benefit 50,000 Arkansans

Editor’s note: The author of this guest commentary, Alan Hughes, is the President of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, the largest organized union in Arkansas.

The Department of Labor has taken an important first step to guarantee overtime protections to millions more working people by raising the salary threshold for overtime protections.

Simply put, if you make less than $50,444, you’re automatically eligible for overtime – nearly five million more workers will be guaranteed overtime protection. Here in Arkansas that means that conservatively about 50,000 Arkansans would be guaranteed overtime protection according to the Department of Labor.

When working people have more money, businesses have more customers and more incentive to hire. This is a major win for working people here in Arkansas and for our Raising Wages Agenda.

For far too long working men and women, the backbone of our country, have put in extra hours to help their companies be successful and grow, without getting paid more for going those extra miles. The current threshold is a mere $23,600 a year. That number is so low that it puts a family of four below the poverty line.

Increasing the overtime salary threshold is the most impactful action the administration can take without the aid of Congress to achieve that goal. But it is only a first step.

Nevertheless, opponents of higher wages are already mobilizing to weaken or defeat the overtime update. They want to lower the salary threshold below $50,400 and they are demanding more delay so they can run out the clock and prevent the administration’s overtime proposal from ever being implemented.

However, the opponents of higher wages have been able to manipulate the rules and get their way for far too long. This is why working people are having such a hard time providing for their families and our economy is so out of balance. Low wages are holding back our economy and hurting businesses, and we have to raise wages if we want to fix our economy.

Raising wages is the issue of our time.

The labor movement and our community allies stand strongly in our belief that all working people deserve to be fairly compensated for their time. Opponents of the raising wages agenda are already trying to drive the salary threshold down as we work to finalize this rule.

These are the same out-of-touch CEOs that vehemently opposed to raising our state minimum wage. It is clear that they are once again putting profits over people by adamantly opposing raising wages for their employees through expanded overtime protections, and have even lobbied to eliminate overtime altogether. Their actions and instincts are wrong for their employees and for all working families.

Expanding overtime protections will create jobs, not cost them. Employers who have been exploiting their employees’ free labor now will have to either respect the 40-hour workweek, giving working people more free time to spend with their families, or pay people what they have earned for the extra hours worked. Under the new proposal, the lowest paid employers will likely benefit the most because managers, many of whom earn $50,000 or less, will now be able to assign additional hours to hourly or part-time workers who need that work, rather than being forced to put in the additional hours themselves without the proper additional pay. Every working person in the Arkansas, deserves to be paid for all of their time worked, these overtime protections will make that possible.

In the coming weeks, the voices of working people will be loud and clear. We will urge our government officials to stand strong on their proposal, strengthen it where possible and not dilute this opportunity to raise wages by bending to the demands of corporate special interests. We will push back against any attempt to deny hardworking men and women any portion of the salaries they have earned.

The Arkansas labor movement and its community partners will keep working and fighting to raise wages for all.