Furchtgott-Roth: Raising Ceiling for Overtime Pay Won't Help Women

The Labor Department will soon make good on President Obama's promise to raise the salary ceiling for workers to receive overtime pay, and that's not a good thing for women, says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Currently, workers making less than $23,660 a year are entitled to overtime, but the Labor Department will probably raise that level to $50,180, she writes in an article for Real Clear Markets.

"Mr. Obama . . . would extend overtime rules to several million employees that businesses classify as executive or professional employees. This would prevent employees from taking time off to make up for overtime work, making it more difficult for some women to work."

Workers wouldn't have the choice of extra vacation time instead of overtime pay.

"Plus, since employers will be required to keep careful track of workers' hours to avoid being sued for overtime violations, they might be unwilling to allow them to work from home," Furchtgott-Roth notes.

"This would limit opportunities for telecommuting, highly valued by some working parents."

Instead, the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013 should be passed. The bill "would allow employers to offer workers who worked more than 40 hours a week a choice of 1.5 hours of comp time per overtime hour worked, rather than overtime pay," she explains. While the bill passed the House last year, the Senate version did not make it out of committee in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

"The 114th Congress should prevent the Labor Department from raising the wage ceiling on required overtime pay. Instead, it should help women by passing the Working Families Flexibility Act and sending it to the president's desk for his signature."

Experts say companies are now making concerted efforts to pay women fairly. "You used to run these analyses only when risk and compliance had a concern," Pat Milligan, president of North America for Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, tells The New York Times.

"Now, you are seeing companies — technology, consumer products, healthcare — do it to stay competitive, and they are doing it as part of an integrated strategy."

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