Bush Bite #20 - 3 Oct 2004
Your latest paycut
You may have been tooling around in a Swift boat on Monday (8/23) when Bush's new labor rules went into effect, and according to the government, 1.3 million more workers will now qualify for overtime.
Uh-huh. Not so fast.
From the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute:
"Contrary to the Bush Administrations claims, it is not the case that 1.3 million low-wage workers who are not getting overtime pay now will. The Administration is engaged in consumer fraud, selling this new regulation on the promise of benefits it knows full well will not materialize.
Part of the problem is that the Departments estimate assumes that every employee among these 1.3 million low-wage workers actually worked overtime during the year, even though the evidence is that they did not, and even though only about one employee in seven generally works overtime.
If the Department had made this same assumption with respect to the proposed rule, it would have found that almost 5 million employees would have lost overtime pay, rather than the 644,000 it claimed.
As the Department admits, the lower paid an employee is, the less likely it is that she is exempt as a bona fide executive, professional or administrator. The Department actually admits that it has fabricated its estimate."
But I'm sure that the new rules won't impact any executives, professionals or administrators that Bush knows personally.
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