New overtime rule means hundreds of thousands of salaried workers will get more time, more money, or a little bit of both
After an extended rulemaking process that included substantial stakeholder engagement and a remarkably high level of public participation, the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries today announced a final overtime rule which will restore overtime protections to hundreds of thousands of overworked & underpaid salaried workers in our state.
“Washington state is bringing back the 40-hour workweek!” said Rachel Lauter, Executive Director of Working Washington. “Under the state’s new overtime rule, hundreds of thousands of salaried workers will once again have a right to overtime pay when they work overtime hours. It’s about time.”
The state’s new overtime rule reverses a decades-long trend of salaried workers clocking more and more hours but getting paid less and less for them. When the rule is fully phased in, workers paid up to 2.5x the state minimum wage (about $70,000/year in 2020 dollars) will get time-and-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week, regardless of whether they’re salaried or hourly, and regardless of their job title.
Michael Chavez is looking forward to the change. Michael has worked as a salaried, overtime-exempt manager for several years, and he knows what happens in that kind of position when your employer doesn’t have to treat your time like it counts.
“Between training new employees, filling in when we’re short-staffed, and management responsibilities, I’ve sometimes worked over 60 hours a week for stretches of time without getting any more money in my paycheck,” Michael explained. “If I have to work that many hours, I should at least get paid for it. But really I’d prefer to be home at the end of the workday so I can have time with family and not have to miss out on holidays. And I know that if my employer has to pay for all my time, they’ll take less of it.”
Unstable work schedules are also an issue for hundreds of thousands of hourly workers, including Michael’s partner Brian Hoorn, who works an hourly retail job and also struggles to have his time respected by his employer.
“I’m excited to see that our state just took a huge step to respect the time of 250,000 salaried workers like my partner Michael,” said Brian, whose employer provides as little as one day’s notice of when he’s going to work. “Now I want to see the state legislature make sure workers like me have their time respected too, by passing a statewide secure scheduling law that ensures we get advance notice of our shifts, input into our schedules, and a right to rest.”
The city of Seattle passed a comprehensive secure scheduling law covering workers at large food & retail chains in 2016. Passing statewide secure scheduling (SB 5717 / HB 1491) is a top priority for Working Washington in next year's legislative session.
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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org
Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we continue to make history by organizing for the landmark statewide paid family leave law in 2017, and winning the groundbreaking Seattle Domestic Workers Bill of Rights last year. For more information, including our press kit, visit workingWA.org.