Perhaps you haven’t heard, but under a proposed new Department of Labor rule starting in 2016, the overtime rules are changing. Right now, a business can classify any qualifying employee (a rule unto itself) making more than $23,360 per year as a salaried employee, instead of an hourly. This lets many businesses offer flexible hours, or allow working from home, or working “as needed” to get things done. Typical examples include people answering e-mails in off hours, pulling late nights to get important projects done, or any of a near-endless array of little things that just need that extra push. This also means that businesses need not keep track of numerous time clocks, time cards, and all of the added bureaucracy required. No more.

Beginning in 2016, the Department of Labor is more than doubling the hourly salary divide to $50,440. Anyone making less than that figure must be classified as an hourly position, must use a time clock, and must be paid for any applicable overtime hours.  This will be disastrous to an already dodgy economy and hiring crisis. Let me quote from Inc. Magazine:

Time clocks. These people all have to record time. If some of your workers are remote, you’ll have to figure out a way for them to record time.

Rules around e-mail and phone calls. Because these employees have been correctly classified as exempt, you and they are probably used to sending e-mail in the evening on the weekend, or having a quick phone conversation after the kids are in bed. No more. These people either need to be strictly forbidden from responding to e-mail and phone calls outside work hours or you need a way to record the time they spend doing these things. Don’t think, “Oh, it’s no big deal to respond to a couple emails.” It is a big deal if you don’t pay them properly.

You’re no longer required to pay for short absences. If an exempt employee has a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day, you can’t dock pay. But these employees are now non-exempt, which means taking an hour out of the middle of the day, a long lunch, or going home early all result in a cut in pay. Make sure your employees understand how this rule has changed.

Unhappy employees. Being made non-exempt after you’ve been exempt often feels like a demotion. It will especially feel like a demotion if someone who was previously included in after hours discussions is now excluded because the business can’t afford to pay that person for the extra time. While they may get excited at the idea of being eligible for overtime, it’s doubtful that many employees will see an actual increase in take-home pay. After all, it’s not like companies have gobs of money sitting around that they can use to increase paychecks. [emphasis mine] You’ll have to meet with each employee individually to explain how this is going to affect them.

Obama and his cronies are clearly doing this as yet another sop to unions and redistributionists, but I can tell you quite clearly what will really happen: People will suddenly find their hours cut, or their jobs axed. You see, every time you raise the cost of employment, employers find ways to use fewer employees. The people who are already close to the new threshold will probably have their salaries bumped to stay above the entirely arbitrary limit, but at the expense of people who maybe only make $30-40k per year. These people will find themselves denied chances to prove themselves by putting in extra effort. They will not be allowed to participate in the workforce, and the starting rungs of the ladder of economic success will be raised well out of reach.

Furthermore, this change opens all of these people to eligibility for union agitation. Right now, unions can’t touch salaried employees. They can’t even attempt to organize them, and that means vast swaths of the knowledge economy is forever locked out of reach of the thugs. This will change, and it will again be ruinous. The DOL will suddenly find itself called to “arbitrate” an enormous number of new “elections,” where it can put its thumb on the scale to certify bogus elections and card-check fraud schemes. You cannot underestimate the scale of the damage this will cause, but it fits so nicely in with Obama’s designs to socialize the entirety of society.

Expect to hear businesses demonized yet again. Expect more blowhard demagoguery about how rich “tycoons” are fleecing the poor. Expect fewer startups. Expect yet more power shifting to union donors. Just another day in our fascist swamp.