Today’s News & Commentary — September 1, 2017
Yesterday, a federal judge invalidated the Obama administration’s overtime rule, which would have doubled the overtime salary threshold to around $47,000. The rule would have made around 4 million additional workers overtime eligible. In an 18-page opinion, Judge Amos Mazzant (E.D. Tex.) concluded that, while the FLSA gives the Labor Department authority to use a salary threshold to determine eligibility for overtime, job duties must also be considered, at least when the salary threshold is high enough that it might sweep in white collar workers exempted from overtime.
As we previously covered, after Judge Mazzant enjoined the rule in November 2016, the Obama Administration appealed. When the Trump Administration took over, it continued to defend its FLSA authority but told the Fifth Circuit that it planned to abandon Obama’s rule.
Also on Thursday, France’s government unveiled its overhaul of the country’s labor code. As The New York Times summarizes:
[President Emmanuel] Macron’s changes make it easier to hire and fire workers and allow some workplace issues to be negotiated directly at the company level, rather than through industrywide agreements . . . .
The changes will go into effect on September 22, after they are ratified by the Cabinet.
The NLRB filed a complaint against Tesla yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reports. The unfair labor practices alleged include Tesla’s requirement that workers sign broad confidentiality agreements that prevented them from talking about safety and working conditions.
