Employees exempt from overtime won’t be getting a pay increase after a judge’s ruling.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor tried to implement a rule that would raise the minimum wage for salaried employees that are exempt from overtime into two phases. The first phase was over the summer. The second would have put the salary floor at about $58,600 annually starting on January 1.
Attorney Mark Smith with the Grand Rapids law firm Rhodes McKee said the wage increase is now no longer going to happen as the rule was struck down in court, although some employers have already adjusted.
“But a number of employers, instead of implementing that wage increase on July 1, dealt with it in other ways,” Smith said. “They changed some salaried employees to hourly employees.”
Smith says there are some questions now. They inlcude how will companies adjust after already reducing hours, demoting salaried employees to hourly, and cutting jobs to manage costs?
