9 ms·

Judge blocks Obama overtime rule, putting it in jeopardy

80 points by protomyth 10y ago

onchidiacea 10y ago
I don't know how businesses get away without paying overtime. My life is finite. My work hours are finite. If you want more hours out of me, you pay for them.
- wtvanhest 10y ago
  Businesses pay for the overtime, but not at 150% of the base rate.
  - jws 10y ago
    This is more about which salaried employees are exempt, that is they don't get overtime. The theory is if you are pulling an oar then, you get overtime if you are hourly or yearly paid. If you are in charge of the ship then you don't have to get overtime. The problem was the law set a fixed annual income as the test for exemption and this got eroded away by inflation. The Obama rule was an attempt to restore the original intent of the law.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    People covered by these exemptions are often not paid overtime at all, as the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require any overtime pay if you fall under the exemptions. These exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where output is measured by work delivered, not hours spent, and where the person has independent responsibility for controlling their working hours to certain extent and were overtime as such is in theory voluntary. The threshold in question exists to make it harder to "define away" overtime pay obligations by pretending a role is more independent than it is, by connecting it to pay levels that makes it more likely that the role does in fact meet the intent of the law. The old/current levels makes a total mockery of that It's worth noting that this change also follows a change in 2004 that went the other way - redefining large groups of previously non-exempt lower level supervisors etc. as exempt, drastically cutting their rights to overtime pay.
    - syshum 10y ago
      >>>>These exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where output is measured by work delivered, not hours spent, and where the person has independent responsibility for controlling their working hours to certain extent and were overtime as such is in theory voluntary. While that is the stated reason, if you actually read the law it becomes clear that these exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where the lobbyist paid congress the correct amount of money to get their preferred job roles exempted >>>>It's worth noting that this change also follows a change in 2004 that went the other way Yes and many (myself included) are wondering why the 2004 Rules in favor of business are with in the scope of DOL power, but the 2016 rules are not. Legally speaking if the 2016 rules are not valid than neither are the 2004 rules
- refurb 10y ago
  I don't know. I kind of like being exempt. If I get my work done early and I decide the take the afternoon off, my paycheck is the same. That said I'm lucky and my company freely comps additional paid time off when I start working more than 40 hours per week.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    A minor point, but this rule was to help others who don't have your kind of work to have some protections.
  - jjoonathan 10y ago
    People talk about "getting their work done" as if an equal amount of work were doled out every day to each worker and getting it done were a "you eat what you kill" result of being highly productive. Is this work-assignment principle common? I could see why a manager might distribute work this way, but I've never seen it actually happen -- it has always been "oh great, you finished early today, you'll have twice as much work tomorrow." The optimistic explanation is that I haven't found a good manager + workplace yet and I should keep looking. The pessimistic explanation is that "getting your work done" is a sign of success at the game of politics on one hand and masterful framing on the other, rather than a result of skillful software engineering. I'm right out of school, I've only had one job, so I don't have a very good sample to make up my own mind from. I'd appreciate hearing opinions on the matter.
    - tbrownaw 10y ago
      I have a mostly infinite to-do list, so my work is never done. When I'm on a more well-defined project, I'll have a deadline and a set of things to do based on how fast I work and what we (me, the project manager, maybe the other developers on the project) think is reasonable. Several co-workers usually have a single project where work is lumpy. They can have a several-day to-do list one week, and be twiddling their thumbs waiting on other people the next week. I don't know anyone who gets a daily task list that isn't calibrated to their skill level.
    - thinkmassive 10y ago
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  I can understand it for higher earners. You are well compensated, typically better conditions and have employment options should the enviroment become toxic. For lower pays absolutely. If an employers agrees to X contracted hours/rate and then demands X+ hours because they know you cant say no, this is essentially theft. And to not pass this as rule essentially mandates it as OK. I hope this gets sorted. I suspect this judge and any future politicians/judges involved will come under a heap of scrutiny/pressure over this. It is simply too clearly unjust not to pass it. It would follow a person for the rest of their career and they would know it.
  - ianai 10y ago
    Your first sentence is the justification for paying people less than 40k year and expecting 80 hours of work out of them. It doesn't hold up.
  - thinkmassive 10y ago
    > I can understand it for higher earners What's the cutoff that determines when someone is classified as a higher earner?
    - abduhl 10y ago
      4. The employee’s hourly rate of pay, or annual salary if paid on salaried basis, meets a minimum threshold amount set by California’s Division of Labor Statistics and Research (DLSR). For 2015, the DLSR set the amounts at $41.27 per hour or annual salary of not less than $85,981.40 for full time employment, and paid not less than $7,165.12 per month.
    - cowl 10y ago
      There should be no cutoff. it's either paid for all (as it should be) or for none. How can you say that some people have less rights because they earn more?
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >How can you say that some people have less rights because they earn more? The same way we say that people must have less stuff, including health care, college for their kids, etc., because they earn less.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  It only works when you are not an easily replaceable commodity. Unless your extra more expensive hours are something your employer can't readily find on the market, it'd trivial to acquire more hours from someone else for a cheaper rate.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  I don't think your stance is unreasonable. Far from it. However, as a worker, I prefer to get paid a lump sum per month as long as I am free to manage my time. I work extra when I want to work extra (which usually coincides with my employer needing some extra help). When I need time off, I take it. Normally I work more than I get paid for. Sometimes disaster strikes, or illness, or once in a lifetime opportunities. I want my employer to respect what I do and give me the opportunity to take the time that I need. I freely give them my time. They freely give me my space. I've worked in places where they track every second. You have a certain number of sick days and god help you if you need more. Punch in. Punch out. Emergencies happen and I'm off to my manager to sign off my overtime slip before I'll even think about stemming the flow of money resulting from downtime. I could go on for a long time, but you get the point. I don't like working for places that act that way. And while I understand the necessity to protect those that must work in such terrible conditions, I don't want to give up the way I like to live: where we both freely give each other what we need. One quick final comment. I don't leave this to chance. I tell my employers pretty clearly that this is how I like to live. If they can't accommodate me, it's usually a sign for me to start looking elsewhere to work. Not everybody has that luxury, but I think it is the ideal they should strive for rather than what people usually ask for (overtime pay).
  - ianai 10y ago
    You can't optimize for the best interpretation and faithful adherence to the law. Just because some drivers could actually drive safely at night with their lights off doesn't make that an ok thing for everybody to do.
- SketchySeaBeast 10y ago
  In my country / province (Canada / Alberta), IT workers are considered professionals and as such we are overtime exempt while we in no way qualify as "high earners" compared to a lot of the surrounding vocations - is that the same where you are, or are we just getting a raw deal up here?
  - onchidiacea 10y ago
    I'm a contractor, and prefer to remain so, after a brief stint as a permanent, ten years back, with an employer that just expected its staff to pull all-nighters and weekends with no notice, no overtime pay and no time in lieu. I prefer to work hourly rates, so that the moment I am asked to work overtime, I can just start charging for it. Unfortunately it's been a long time since I saw a contract here in Australia on anything other than a daily rate - so now, if I ever have to work overtime in a day, then I just make that up by working fewer hours the next. And then if asked to work weekends, then I charge per day for that, too. I've never accepted the argument that because "professionals" get paid more that we're handing a blank cheque to employers to make us work as long as they like without extra pay. Doing so just reduces our effective hourly rate, in the long term. TBH, I don't actually know how the law in Australia works regarding this, but it seems that employers can get away with not paying for overtime, if they want.
Pxtl 10y ago
People keep talking about how Trump's election was about winning the white working class. We'll see how interested he is in their right to fair wages.
- refurb 10y ago
  Trump's not even in office and he's getting blamed already. This was a judge who made the ruling. Not Trump.
  - kmc059000 10y ago
    Plus the judge was nominated by Obama.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    That wasn't blaming him - it was saying it will be interesting to see how he reacts to this. He's got time to whine about a theater, surely this will also get an angry tweet.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    He's not getting blamed. The above commenter is simply pointing out that this will serve as a good test as to whether he will come out in favour of working class people or business.
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    He already had expressed interest in changing the new Obama ruling. FYI, that was mentioned in TFA
  - davidnc 10y ago
    The article does mention that in August Trump promised to roll back the regulation.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    I think this entire thread is diverging from the article, but the article does quote Trump: Trump has vowed to roll back Obama regulations that he says are hurting the economy. He expressed support for changing the overtime rule during the presidential campaign. “Rolling back the overtime regulation is just one example of the many regulations that need to be addressed to do that,” Trump told Circa in August. “We would love to see a delay or a carve-out of sorts for our small business owners."
SubiculumCode 10y ago
This is shit. The lower limit for salary hasn't changed for years, and has not tracked inflation. As a post-doc this would have probably really bummed me out if it wasn't for the fact my union had already signed a new contract with the university for new pay raises based on the new Obama administration rules. Yay union.
- hga 10y ago
  You're effectively saying "[The rule of law] is shit", which as the article notes, might also result in the new Trump administration refusing to defend this administrative action (which would be legitimate unlike the cases where the executive of a government refuses to defend a law passed by the legislature in front of the court system (just to lay out our general pattern of 3-4 branches of government (4 when you count the "administrative state"))). Or more simply, the ends do not justify the means, even if, as you point out and I agree in principle, the ends in this case are potentially good. The prospect of Trump in power in what's arguably no longer a republic run under the Rule of Law has gotten a lot of people to reconsider their position on this (and I share a concern, despite or perhaps even more because I voted for him), and I'll close with the classic Man of All Seasons quote: Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
  - sethrin 10y ago
    No, that would be a strawman argument. Whatever legal principles are at stake here do not rise to a repudiation of law itself.
    - hga 10y ago
      Well, I perceive that SubiculumCode is among other things arguing that this legal procedural issue, and the possibility that the administrative rule making did not follow the law, something we ought to accept as legit given that Obama nominated the judge and the hurdle to get a preliminary injunction is very high, as Sacho abily discusses in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028904, "is shit". I certainly could have gotten his intent wrong, but for now his words have to stand as written, and the issue of the Rule of Law is both entirely relevant to this case and to current events in the US.
inthewoods 10y ago
Interesting unintended consequences with this - my sister-in-law had her job hours radically shifted to deal with this rule - and not in a good way that she appreciated.
- icelancer 10y ago
  Right. Most businesses (non-restaurant) are going to easily be able to get around this rule and make things worse for employees. It will exacerbate the "contract employee" revolution in office settings.
- slewis 10y ago
  Would you mind explaining the shift change in more detail? Did the employer hire more in order to lower everyone's hours below the overtime limit?
  - rincebrain 10y ago
    Not the parent, but I have known a couple of places that simply cut hours, without either hiring more people or increasing the hourly burden on exempt employees, and then complained they weren't meeting their targets. (I've also known one or two places where they flat out told people to not report hours above a threshold and/or "mysteriously" deleted the overtime from the hours recorded, and the employees felt they couldn't report it to external authorities without getting fired.)
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  On election day Santa Clara county approved Measure E, which requires any business above a certain number of employees to offer additional work hours to existing part-time employees before hiring more part-time employees. The idea being to make it illegal for a company to just keep hiring more and more part-timers to avoid ever giving someone enough hours to become full-time. I suspect if the overtime rule sticks around we'll see similar measures pop up for it.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
vaadu 10y ago
The judge was not ruling on the substance of the overtime rule change, only whether the executive branch had the authority to make the rule change. The judge determined that the overtime rule, which was created by the legislative branch, did not give the executive branch the authority to change the rule in the way the Labor dept. tried to.
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- guelo 10y ago
  The overtime law gives the Department of Labor the authority to define who is exempt. The judge was the one that made up law by inventing a limit to the authority that congress granted to the Department of Labor.
  - Sacho 10y ago
    Here is a source for the judge's order: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/files/epress/Overtime_-_PI_Grant_(11-22-16).pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/files/epress/Overtime_-... I am not a lawyer, so I urge people to read the text and decide for themselves. Here's my analysis: In order to issue a preliminary injuction, the plaintiffs must present a "prima facie" case, essentially, a demonstration that they can win the case under the assumption that all their factual claims are true. First the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the case. Then they must show they would suffer "irreparable harm", necessitating the injunction. The court must then consider a "balance of hardships" - since in a preliminary injunction, both sides can claim "injury", the court must "consider the effect on each party of the granting or withholding of the requested relief". Further, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a "public interest" in the injunction. For the "likelihood of success on the merits", the judge analysed each of the arguments: 1. Plaintiffs argue that the FLSA does not apply to the States; the judge decides it does, applying the "Garcia" analysis from the Supreme Court. 2. Plaintiffs argue that Chevron deference does not apply for this case, judge agrees. Chevron deference is a legal standard roughly saying that in the case of an ambiguous law, the Court should defer to the interpretation of the government body authorized to apply the law(as they are presumed experts in the field), as long as the interpretation does not contradict the evident intentions of the law. 3. Plaintiffs argue that the automatic update mechanism of the Final Rule violates the APA. The judge does not analyse this, using his previous analysis of Chevron deference to conclude that the Final Rule is unlawful and that 3) does not need to be settled. The rest of the analysis("irreparable harm" etc) from the judge is not as long so I don't feel it's worth summarizing in any way. I don't find the judge "making up" any law in their analysis - can you please be more specific which part of his analysis you disagree with?
cyberferret 10y ago
The timing of this is intriguing. Pretty much last minute change. I do a lot of accounting & payroll consulting work (not in the US), but I see on a lot of forums that consultants in the US are panicking because they have spent weeks getting their client systems ready for the change, and now they have to maybe undo all of that in short order.
cowardlydragon 10y ago
What does it matter anyway? Trump is coming to town. That was one of the first things he was going to nuke anyway..
- guelo 10y ago
  Republicans were hoping not to have to repeal the rule after it had already taken effect pissing off millions of workers.
jeffdavis 10y ago
Why is the President making law in the first place? If this law was made by Congress, it would be less susceptible to legal challenge now, or reversal by a future administration.
- guelo 10y ago
  The law gives the regulator the authority to determine who is exempt from overtime. This is not "making law", it is excersizing authority granted under existing law.
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    But it's exercising a kind of blank check of power given by Congress. I don't think Congress should issue blank checks; I think they should do their job.
appletv2 10y ago
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80 points by protomyth 10y ago

I don't know how businesses get away without paying overtime. My life is finite. My work hours are finite. If you want more hours out of me, you pay for them.

wtvanhest 10y ago
Businesses pay for the overtime, but not at 150% of the base rate.
- jws 10y ago
  This is more about which salaried employees are exempt, that is they don't get overtime. The theory is if you are pulling an oar then, you get overtime if you are hourly or yearly paid. If you are in charge of the ship then you don't have to get overtime. The problem was the law set a fixed annual income as the test for exemption and this got eroded away by inflation. The Obama rule was an attempt to restore the original intent of the law.
- vidarh 10y ago
  People covered by these exemptions are often not paid overtime at all, as the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require any overtime pay if you fall under the exemptions. These exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where output is measured by work delivered, not hours spent, and where the person has independent responsibility for controlling their working hours to certain extent and were overtime as such is in theory voluntary. The threshold in question exists to make it harder to "define away" overtime pay obligations by pretending a role is more independent than it is, by connecting it to pay levels that makes it more likely that the role does in fact meet the intent of the law. The old/current levels makes a total mockery of that It's worth noting that this change also follows a change in 2004 that went the other way - redefining large groups of previously non-exempt lower level supervisors etc. as exempt, drastically cutting their rights to overtime pay.
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>>>These exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where output is measured by work delivered, not hours spent, and where the person has independent responsibility for controlling their working hours to certain extent and were overtime as such is in theory voluntary. While that is the stated reason, if you actually read the law it becomes clear that these exemptions are meant to cover people in certain job roles where the lobbyist paid congress the correct amount of money to get their preferred job roles exempted >>>>It's worth noting that this change also follows a change in 2004 that went the other way Yes and many (myself included) are wondering why the 2004 Rules in favor of business are with in the scope of DOL power, but the 2016 rules are not. Legally speaking if the 2016 rules are not valid than neither are the 2004 rules
refurb 10y ago
I don't know. I kind of like being exempt. If I get my work done early and I decide the take the afternoon off, my paycheck is the same. That said I'm lucky and my company freely comps additional paid time off when I start working more than 40 hours per week.
- noobermin 10y ago
  A minor point, but this rule was to help others who don't have your kind of work to have some protections.
- jjoonathan 10y ago
  People talk about "getting their work done" as if an equal amount of work were doled out every day to each worker and getting it done were a "you eat what you kill" result of being highly productive. Is this work-assignment principle common? I could see why a manager might distribute work this way, but I've never seen it actually happen -- it has always been "oh great, you finished early today, you'll have twice as much work tomorrow." The optimistic explanation is that I haven't found a good manager + workplace yet and I should keep looking. The pessimistic explanation is that "getting your work done" is a sign of success at the game of politics on one hand and masterful framing on the other, rather than a result of skillful software engineering. I'm right out of school, I've only had one job, so I don't have a very good sample to make up my own mind from. I'd appreciate hearing opinions on the matter.
  - tbrownaw 10y ago
    I have a mostly infinite to-do list, so my work is never done. When I'm on a more well-defined project, I'll have a deadline and a set of things to do based on how fast I work and what we (me, the project manager, maybe the other developers on the project) think is reasonable. Several co-workers usually have a single project where work is lumpy. They can have a several-day to-do list one week, and be twiddling their thumbs waiting on other people the next week. I don't know anyone who gets a daily task list that isn't calibrated to their skill level.
  - thinkmassive 10y ago
Gustomaximus 10y ago
I can understand it for higher earners. You are well compensated, typically better conditions and have employment options should the enviroment become toxic. For lower pays absolutely. If an employers agrees to X contracted hours/rate and then demands X+ hours because they know you cant say no, this is essentially theft. And to not pass this as rule essentially mandates it as OK. I hope this gets sorted. I suspect this judge and any future politicians/judges involved will come under a heap of scrutiny/pressure over this. It is simply too clearly unjust not to pass it. It would follow a person for the rest of their career and they would know it.
- ianai 10y ago
  Your first sentence is the justification for paying people less than 40k year and expecting 80 hours of work out of them. It doesn't hold up.
- thinkmassive 10y ago
  > I can understand it for higher earners What's the cutoff that determines when someone is classified as a higher earner?
  - abduhl 10y ago
    4. The employee’s hourly rate of pay, or annual salary if paid on salaried basis, meets a minimum threshold amount set by California’s Division of Labor Statistics and Research (DLSR). For 2015, the DLSR set the amounts at $41.27 per hour or annual salary of not less than $85,981.40 for full time employment, and paid not less than $7,165.12 per month.
  - cowl 10y ago
    There should be no cutoff. it's either paid for all (as it should be) or for none. How can you say that some people have less rights because they earn more?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >How can you say that some people have less rights because they earn more? The same way we say that people must have less stuff, including health care, college for their kids, etc., because they earn less.
rbanffy 10y ago
It only works when you are not an easily replaceable commodity. Unless your extra more expensive hours are something your employer can't readily find on the market, it'd trivial to acquire more hours from someone else for a cheaper rate.
mikekchar 10y ago
I don't think your stance is unreasonable. Far from it. However, as a worker, I prefer to get paid a lump sum per month as long as I am free to manage my time. I work extra when I want to work extra (which usually coincides with my employer needing some extra help). When I need time off, I take it. Normally I work more than I get paid for. Sometimes disaster strikes, or illness, or once in a lifetime opportunities. I want my employer to respect what I do and give me the opportunity to take the time that I need. I freely give them my time. They freely give me my space. I've worked in places where they track every second. You have a certain number of sick days and god help you if you need more. Punch in. Punch out. Emergencies happen and I'm off to my manager to sign off my overtime slip before I'll even think about stemming the flow of money resulting from downtime. I could go on for a long time, but you get the point. I don't like working for places that act that way. And while I understand the necessity to protect those that must work in such terrible conditions, I don't want to give up the way I like to live: where we both freely give each other what we need. One quick final comment. I don't leave this to chance. I tell my employers pretty clearly that this is how I like to live. If they can't accommodate me, it's usually a sign for me to start looking elsewhere to work. Not everybody has that luxury, but I think it is the ideal they should strive for rather than what people usually ask for (overtime pay).
- ianai 10y ago
  You can't optimize for the best interpretation and faithful adherence to the law. Just because some drivers could actually drive safely at night with their lights off doesn't make that an ok thing for everybody to do.
SketchySeaBeast 10y ago
In my country / province (Canada / Alberta), IT workers are considered professionals and as such we are overtime exempt while we in no way qualify as "high earners" compared to a lot of the surrounding vocations - is that the same where you are, or are we just getting a raw deal up here?
- onchidiacea 10y ago
  I'm a contractor, and prefer to remain so, after a brief stint as a permanent, ten years back, with an employer that just expected its staff to pull all-nighters and weekends with no notice, no overtime pay and no time in lieu. I prefer to work hourly rates, so that the moment I am asked to work overtime, I can just start charging for it. Unfortunately it's been a long time since I saw a contract here in Australia on anything other than a daily rate - so now, if I ever have to work overtime in a day, then I just make that up by working fewer hours the next. And then if asked to work weekends, then I charge per day for that, too. I've never accepted the argument that because "professionals" get paid more that we're handing a blank cheque to employers to make us work as long as they like without extra pay. Doing so just reduces our effective hourly rate, in the long term. TBH, I don't actually know how the law in Australia works regarding this, but it seems that employers can get away with not paying for overtime, if they want.

Pxtl 10y ago

People keep talking about how Trump's election was about winning the white working class. We'll see how interested he is in their right to fair wages.

refurb 10y ago
Trump's not even in office and he's getting blamed already. This was a judge who made the ruling. Not Trump.
- kmc059000 10y ago
  Plus the judge was nominated by Obama.
- jacalata 10y ago
  That wasn't blaming him - it was saying it will be interesting to see how he reacts to this. He's got time to whine about a theater, surely this will also get an angry tweet.
- vidarh 10y ago
  He's not getting blamed. The above commenter is simply pointing out that this will serve as a good test as to whether he will come out in favour of working class people or business.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  He already had expressed interest in changing the new Obama ruling. FYI, that was mentioned in TFA
- davidnc 10y ago
  The article does mention that in August Trump promised to roll back the regulation.
- noobermin 10y ago
  I think this entire thread is diverging from the article, but the article does quote Trump: Trump has vowed to roll back Obama regulations that he says are hurting the economy. He expressed support for changing the overtime rule during the presidential campaign. “Rolling back the overtime regulation is just one example of the many regulations that need to be addressed to do that,” Trump told Circa in August. “We would love to see a delay or a carve-out of sorts for our small business owners."

SubiculumCode 10y ago

This is shit. The lower limit for salary hasn't changed for years, and has not tracked inflation. As a post-doc this would have probably really bummed me out if it wasn't for the fact my union had already signed a new contract with the university for new pay raises based on the new Obama administration rules. Yay union.

hga 10y ago
You're effectively saying "[The rule of law] is shit", which as the article notes, might also result in the new Trump administration refusing to defend this administrative action (which would be legitimate unlike the cases where the executive of a government refuses to defend a law passed by the legislature in front of the court system (just to lay out our general pattern of 3-4 branches of government (4 when you count the "administrative state"))). Or more simply, the ends do not justify the means, even if, as you point out and I agree in principle, the ends in this case are potentially good. The prospect of Trump in power in what's arguably no longer a republic run under the Rule of Law has gotten a lot of people to reconsider their position on this (and I share a concern, despite or perhaps even more because I voted for him), and I'll close with the classic Man of All Seasons quote: Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
- sethrin 10y ago
  No, that would be a strawman argument. Whatever legal principles are at stake here do not rise to a repudiation of law itself.
  - hga 10y ago
    Well, I perceive that SubiculumCode is among other things arguing that this legal procedural issue, and the possibility that the administrative rule making did not follow the law, something we ought to accept as legit given that Obama nominated the judge and the hurdle to get a preliminary injunction is very high, as Sacho abily discusses in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028904, "is shit". I certainly could have gotten his intent wrong, but for now his words have to stand as written, and the issue of the Rule of Law is both entirely relevant to this case and to current events in the US.

inthewoods 10y ago

Interesting unintended consequences with this - my sister-in-law had her job hours radically shifted to deal with this rule - and not in a good way that she appreciated.

icelancer 10y ago
Right. Most businesses (non-restaurant) are going to easily be able to get around this rule and make things worse for employees. It will exacerbate the "contract employee" revolution in office settings.
slewis 10y ago
Would you mind explaining the shift change in more detail? Did the employer hire more in order to lower everyone's hours below the overtime limit?
- rincebrain 10y ago
  Not the parent, but I have known a couple of places that simply cut hours, without either hiring more people or increasing the hourly burden on exempt employees, and then complained they weren't meeting their targets. (I've also known one or two places where they flat out told people to not report hours above a threshold and/or "mysteriously" deleted the overtime from the hours recorded, and the employees felt they couldn't report it to external authorities without getting fired.)
ubernostrum 10y ago
On election day Santa Clara county approved Measure E, which requires any business above a certain number of employees to offer additional work hours to existing part-time employees before hiring more part-time employees. The idea being to make it illegal for a company to just keep hiring more and more part-timers to avoid ever giving someone enough hours to become full-time. I suspect if the overtime rule sticks around we'll see similar measures pop up for it.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago

vaadu 10y ago

The judge was not ruling on the substance of the overtime rule change, only whether the executive branch had the authority to make the rule change. The judge determined that the overtime rule, which was created by the legislative branch, did not give the executive branch the authority to change the rule in the way the Labor dept. tried to.

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guelo 10y ago
The overtime law gives the Department of Labor the authority to define who is exempt. The judge was the one that made up law by inventing a limit to the authority that congress granted to the Department of Labor.
- Sacho 10y ago
  Here is a source for the judge's order: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/files/epress/Overtime_-_PI_Grant_(11-22-16).pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/files/epress/Overtime_-... I am not a lawyer, so I urge people to read the text and decide for themselves. Here's my analysis: In order to issue a preliminary injuction, the plaintiffs must present a "prima facie" case, essentially, a demonstration that they can win the case under the assumption that all their factual claims are true. First the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the case. Then they must show they would suffer "irreparable harm", necessitating the injunction. The court must then consider a "balance of hardships" - since in a preliminary injunction, both sides can claim "injury", the court must "consider the effect on each party of the granting or withholding of the requested relief". Further, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a "public interest" in the injunction. For the "likelihood of success on the merits", the judge analysed each of the arguments: 1. Plaintiffs argue that the FLSA does not apply to the States; the judge decides it does, applying the "Garcia" analysis from the Supreme Court. 2. Plaintiffs argue that Chevron deference does not apply for this case, judge agrees. Chevron deference is a legal standard roughly saying that in the case of an ambiguous law, the Court should defer to the interpretation of the government body authorized to apply the law(as they are presumed experts in the field), as long as the interpretation does not contradict the evident intentions of the law. 3. Plaintiffs argue that the automatic update mechanism of the Final Rule violates the APA. The judge does not analyse this, using his previous analysis of Chevron deference to conclude that the Final Rule is unlawful and that 3) does not need to be settled. The rest of the analysis("irreparable harm" etc) from the judge is not as long so I don't feel it's worth summarizing in any way. I don't find the judge "making up" any law in their analysis - can you please be more specific which part of his analysis you disagree with?

cyberferret 10y ago

The timing of this is intriguing. Pretty much last minute change. I do a lot of accounting & payroll consulting work (not in the US), but I see on a lot of forums that consultants in the US are panicking because they have spent weeks getting their client systems ready for the change, and now they have to maybe undo all of that in short order.

cowardlydragon 10y ago

What does it matter anyway? Trump is coming to town. That was one of the first things he was going to nuke anyway..

guelo 10y ago
Republicans were hoping not to have to repeal the rule after it had already taken effect pissing off millions of workers.

jeffdavis 10y ago

Why is the President making law in the first place? If this law was made by Congress, it would be less susceptible to legal challenge now, or reversal by a future administration.

guelo 10y ago
The law gives the regulator the authority to determine who is exempt from overtime. This is not "making law", it is excersizing authority granted under existing law.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  But it's exercising a kind of blank check of power given by Congress. I don't think Congress should issue blank checks; I think they should do their job.

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