Lines Drawn Over White House Plan To Allow Overtime Pay For Salaried Workers
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Some area business owners say they are concerned about the Obama administration's proposal to change labor regulations so that more salaried workers would get overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week (see related story).
Curtis Bashaw, who owns the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, says he puts people on salary so they can work year-round: shorter hours in the dead of winter, longer in the bustle of summer.
Those workers might have to be paid overtime for those longer hours under Pres. Obama's proposal, something Bashaw says would hurt workers.
"We have about 60 employees that would be impacted by this rule change," he tells KYW Newsradio, "and it's not just a snap, crackle, pop for us to solve for that without looking at the number of people we're employing and how we would recalibrate."
But Gabe Morgan, Pennsylvania state director for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ, doesn't buy that.
"The idea that somehow this would hurt jobs is not a good argument," he says. He supports the White House proposal as not only fair but economically essential.
"The basic idea of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work is a fundamental principle that you need to have a middle class," he says.
The Obama administration says the rule change is needed because wages have stagnated while corporate profits have grown.
