Despite strenuous objections from the public and Democrats in Congress, new overtime regulations defining who an administrative, executive, or professional employee exempt from the overtime pay requirements went into effect on August 23, 2004. Although the Bush Administration insists that they will not strip overtime pay from many workers that now rely on it, scrutiny of the regulations reveals that millions of workers stand to lose their right to overtime pay. On five separate occasions, majorities in the House or the Senate, voted against implementing the Bush Administration regulations. Despite this the Republican leadership successfully thwarted the majority will by preventing votes on the overtime issue on key appropriations bills.

“A significant number of employees may be adversely affected by the new regulations. When you start to read the fine print, you see that overtime pay for potentially millions of employees making between $23,660 and $100,000 is at risk, including employees working in financial services, chefs, computer programmers, route drivers, assistant retail managers, pre-school teachers, team leaders, and many other categories of employees. The regulations raise serious questions about whether registered nurses will continue to receive overtime pay . . . far from clarifying the law, the Department’s new regulation opens a floodgate of new litigation, confusion, and fear by employers and employees. The Department even admits that the new regulations will prompt employers to begin scrutinizing the overtime status of 2.4 million employees.” -- Representative George Miller

“This regulation is going to decrease the rights of workers and do very little if anything to decrease the litigation that employers are experiencing. What I want you to know is that most of the flaws in this regulation are going to negatively affect workers earning between $23,660 and $100,000 per year. Many of these employees work in businesses that the Department has identified as low-wage industries. Some of them are: nursery school teachers, nurses, chefs, team leaders, outside sales people, and financial service employees.” -- Karen Dulaney Smith, Wage and Hour Investigator with the Department of Labor from 1987 to 1999