To: President Donald Trump
Raise the Threshold for Overtime Pay
Raise the overtime threshold to $69,000, to lower unemployment and raise wages for the middle class. It's past time to make policy that supports the real economy.
Why is this important?
If the overtime pay threshold were raised to $69,000, capital holders "would be forced to hire millions more people to do the work you currently do for free. That would drive down unemployment. And a tighter labor market would drive up wages for the first time in 40 years."
"In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime."
"To get the country back to the same equitable standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to raise the overtime threshold to $69,000."
- Nick Hanauer, "Whatever Happened to Overtime?" in Politico Magazine, November 17, 2014
"In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime."
"To get the country back to the same equitable standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to raise the overtime threshold to $69,000."
- Nick Hanauer, "Whatever Happened to Overtime?" in Politico Magazine, November 17, 2014