In a long-awaited announcement this week, the U.S. Department of Labor released new regulations requiring companies to give overtime pay to a whole new group of formerly exempt workers. Under these revisions to the Fair Labor Standards Act, it’s estimated that the rules will lead to time-and-a-half pay for all hours logged over the 40-hour workweek for nearly 5 million additional members of the U.S. workforce.
It will take at least a few more months and a public comment period before the rules, which were announced by President Barack Obama earlier this week, become the law of the land. However, companies already can get a pretty clear concept of what is coming, and should think about preparing now for these potentially major alterations to the way they categorize and compensate employees.
