Tightening up rules on exempt employment would be a good step too. Exempt was meant to be just that, an special case exemption for a few high level professional

Tightening up rules on exempt employment would be a good step too. Exempt was meant to be just that, an special case exemption for a few high level professionals, not the default for all white collar (and even some blue collar) work. My last job required that I fill out a timesheet each week. On an average day, I assigned hours to about four different time codes. For positions that bill by time such as attorneys and doctors, this might be reasonable but for inhouse software development, it felt a lot more like an hourly job. Even though I was salaried, failing to have 40 hours on my timesheet each week would result in a proportional reduction in pay (there was no increase in pay if I went over 40). I mentioned this to higher ups and was told that it wasn't actually a timesheet, it was so they could determine "resource allocation", which sounded like an flimsy excuse. Using it to track PTO seems reasonable. Using it to track hours at my computer doesn't. This wasn't a small inexperienced company. Its roots go back to the 1940s and it had over 20,000 employees, so they probably knew the relevant labor laws and either were allowed to do this or thought they'd never get called on it. Either way, exempt doesn't seem to mean much anymore other than another way for employers to squeeze employees harder.