How Good Government Works
This week, the Biden administration rolled out a series of largely invisible policy changes, like requiring more overtime pay and telling airlines they have to pay us back for canceled flights.
Back in 2015 I reported on the Obama Administration’s move to raise the threshold for overtime pay to just under $48,000.
Let me explain.
People are either paid as salaried workers or hourly workers.
Hourly workers are limited to 40 hours a week. If they work more than that, they get time and a half - overtime - for the extra hours they put in.
If hourly employees work on holidays - like Christmas or Thanksgiving - they get time and a half for those days.
Salaried workers who earn above a certain amount just get a salary, no matter how many hours they work a week.
Obviously, if an employer sees a salaried worker is putting in less than 40 hours, the manager will have a word with that employee, and keep monitoring the situation.
But for some reason (hmm), employers don’t put too much effort into monitoring how much extra work their salaried employees are putting in.
They’re supposed to, though.
The Department of Labor has in place salary thresholds that are supposed to stop an employer from designating low-paid employees as salaried workers. The department is also supposed to be monitoring job classification - making sure that someone who is being paid a salary is not doing the duties of hourly workers.
Like a fast-food “manager” whose job is 99.9 percent the same as the hourly wage people she “manages.” Except she has to work overtime to fill their shifts when they call in sick - without being paid more.
The Obama Administration wanted to raise the overtime salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476 a year.
Alas, Obama’s rule was blocked in court. And since it was blocked in December 2016, while Obama was a lame duck, the administration didn’t fight it.
Three years later, the Trump Administration came up with a new overtime rule that stuck. They changed the threshold from $23,660 to $35,568. That is, any salaried worker who made less than $35,568 would have to be paid overtime.
But a salaried worker who made $36,000 would not.
The Economic Policy Institute was highly disappointed in the Trump Administration decision, noting that it left too many workers behind.
As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains in his Wealth and Poverty class (which I have linked to several times; you really should watch it), in the 1980s, the entire characterization of a “’successful business” changed from “one that serves a variety of stakeholders - including workers, the community and owners” to “one that serves only owners.”
During Reagan, and especially in the Clinton era, the entire focus of running a business - especially a public company - was on minimizing expenses and maximizing profits for investors. Workers were seen as expenses to be minimized.
No wonder people in this country are so angry. For 40 years it has been POLICY to disrespect workers.
This week, the Biden Administration raised the threshold for salaried workers to $58,656. This means anyone who earns a salary of, say $58,000 must be paid overtime. And anyone who makes $59,000 does not have to be paid overtime.
This new threshold will be rolled out in two stages. In July of this year, the threshold will be raised to $55,069, then go up to $58,656 in July of 2025.
This brings the threshold a bit closer to the living wage for each of a two-earner family in most states.
Interestingly, I just learned that there is an executive salary threshold. If you are an executive making less than $132,964 per year, you must be paid for your overtime work. In 2025, that will rise to $151,164.
This is a significant change in holding employers accountable for fairly compensating their employees.
But I’m afraid most of the country won’t know about it.
The Great Distraction
This week, we had wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s 2016 election interference trial in New York. The press keeps mischaracterizing this as the “hush money trial.” But it’s really about paying people off to keep info from voters in the months before the election.
The wall-to-wall trial coverage was interrupted by the Supreme Court immunity case, in which Justice Alito made clear both that he thinks January 6 wasn’t a big deal, and that he thinks all of the charges in the various criminal cases brought against Trump are - as Trump keeps saying - being orchestrated by President Biden.
It was Biden whom Alito was referring to when he wondered aloud if not having immunity would make a losing president not leave office for fear of being persecuted by his successor.
This is the only way this incredibly stunning statement makes sense. And it deserved all of our attention.
Our attention also needed to turn to leaders of dozens of universities calling in the police to haul off students who were peacefully protesting.
I mean, it’s not like they didn’t know police would introduce violence. Or that universities are supposed to stand for free thought. Columbia could have started where they are now - negotiating with the protesters to create change they can all agree on.
So it’s not surprising that the news of the overtime salary threshold going up should have gotten buried not just in the news cycle, but in our audiences’ capacity to take it in.
But it’s also a big deal.
We are so pumped up on the adrenaline rush of chaos and corruption that we don’t even know what good government looks like.
Stopping wage theft via unpaid overtime is good government.
Restoring Net Neutrality is good government.
Cracking down on airline junk fees is good government. As is requiring airlines to pay you back for a canceled flight rather than give you a voucher.
So is eliminating non-compete agreements, which Reich notes “trap workers in their jobs and keep them from getting better career opportunities.”
All of these rules changes were rolled out by the Biden Administration this week.
Stopping non-competes was a promise Biden made in his 2023 State of the Union. But that was 15 months ago, and we as a country just don’t have the capacity to connect the dots between promise and action.
Connecting Bad Decisions
This last point, sadly, is not a new phenomenon. Back in the ‘80s, when President Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers union, I remember economists, sociologists, and politicians noting that this would lead to economic imbalance.
Their voices were drowned out by trickle-down cheerleaders - including journalists.
I remember when the Clinton Administration orchestrated the rollback of the Glass-Steagall Act - which was enacted during the Great Depression to wall off banks from Wall Street exuberance. I remember thinking that this would result in another financial meltdown. But while people have analyzed ad nauseam the reasons why the housing market crashed in 2008, fewer people have gone back to note that the decisions made in the 1990s drew a direct line to the fall of Lehman Brothers.
Remember in 2010 when the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia exploded, killing 29 miners?
News reports during the rescue and recovery operations unearthed over 500 citations issued by the Department of Labor to the mine’s owner, Massey Energy, in 2009. But the mine wasn’t shut down, nor were the safety issues addressed.
A subsequent Mine Safety and Health Administration investigation concluded that Massey Energy, used it’s power “to attempt to control West Virginia’s political system.”
At the time, there were reports of lack of training and morale issues among inspectors in the Department of Labor.
All this was happening as Congress made it a priority to cut the federal government workforce, and inspectors whose job it was to hold corporations to high standards felt threatened.
Now think about how many hundreds of people have been killed due to the same lax regulation of Boeing.
And think about how many voters just shrug at both of these things, yet focus their anger in support of a would-be dictator. Because fixing the problem is complicated. Being angry is not.
All of this connects. All of this is a choice. But we get so overwhelmed by the individual incidents - and the larger, more voluble chaos surrounding Trump - that we can’t step back and see the patterns.
But the patterns are there. Government can and does affect our lives. Now, after 40 years, government is starting to work to affect our lives in a good way.
The best part is, there are people like Pramila Jayapal and Sheldon Whitehouse whose voices are gaining traction in Congress, so even the things that aren’t working are on the table.
Progress is being made. We need to talk about that, too.
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This makes me so emotional! I want to shake people out of the cable-news stupor and chaos addiction and scream about the progress being made and the potential for more, if we’d just get our focus straight. Thank you for ending on that hopeful note — such a vital reminder 💖