The Department of Labor has filed a notice to appeal an injunction from a Texas federal judge that halted the Dec. 1 implementation of new overtime rules.
The department filed a notice of appeal Thursday in hopes of moving ahead with the new rule, which have more than doubled the threshold for overtime eligibility from $23,660 to $47,476. And for the first time, employers would have been able to meet up to 10 percent of the salary level with bonuses and commissions.
The rule was meant to put more money in the pockets of middle class workers or give them more free time, according to the DOL.
Last month, 21 states and a coalition of business groups filed two separate lawsuits to overturn the regulation, alleging that the government had overstepped its authority. Mazzant wrote in his order that in setting the new salary threshold, “the department exceeds its delegated authority and ignores Congress’s intent.”
President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has vowed to roll back business regulations and has called the rule an overreach of power by the Obama administration. If the court of appeals does not lift the injunction before he is inaugurated, many believe that the legislation will die.
Beau Hartman, manager of Hartman Landscaping in Zanesville, Ohio, had been planning to create more salaried positions in the coming years, but says the new rule would make that impossible. Instead, he planned to move his employees from salaried to hourly.
Only two of his staff would be directly impacted by the DOL changes, with his operations manager being the most affected.
Hartman had planned on creating a third salaried position but says he would no longer able to do that due to the changes. He had also been planning to move a couple of his snow team members to a salary of about $25,000 in the next few years, but now that idea is impossible.
“We don’t really have much choice other than to go back to hourly,” he says.
Click here to see how landscape companies are planning to deal with the rule if it goes into effect.