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House OKs bill to delay higher overtime limits

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//September 29, 2016//

House OKs bill to delay higher overtime limits

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//September 29, 2016//

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Construction-industry groups are praising the U.S. House of Representatives’ approval Wednesday of a bill that would delay the effective date of new federal overtime standards by six months.

An executive order handed down by the Obama Administration earlier this year calls for employers to provide overtime to salaried employees making up to $47,476 a year. That limit is more than double the current one, which is set at $23,660 a year.

The Obama Administration also established a mechanism that will cause that pay threshold to be revised automatically every three years to track changes in general wages. Department of Labor officials estimate the new overtime protections will cover an additional 4.2 million U.S. workers, 69,000 of whom will be in Wisconsin.

Obama’s original executive order called for the new rules to take effect on Dec. 1. The bill House lawmakers passed Wednesday would delay the effective date to June 1.

President Obama has suggested he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk.

Industry groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors were quick to praise House lawmakers’ actions.

“The new overtime rule will have a long list of unintended consequences for ABC members, including increased labor costs and an undue burden on certain regions of the country,” said Kristen Swearingen, ABC vice president of legislative and political affairs.

The ABC, which mostly represents nonunion contractors, is among a faction of industry groups that filed a legal challenge of the new rules last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Separately, the Wisconsin Department of Justice has joined 20 other states in a lawsuit over the overtime executive order.

The new overtime rules are only one in a series of federal pay and employment policies that have been decried by the construction industry over the past year. On Aug. 1, for instance, the government increased the penalties imposed on companies that violate Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules.

The adjustment took the maximum penalty for serious violations up from $7,000 to $12,741 and the maximum for willful and repeated violations up from $70,000 to $124,709.

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