Protest New Regs

Federal Unions Say OT Rights at Stake

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

A change made to U.S. Department of Labor rules two years ago that altered how private-sector employees qualified for overtime pay will soon be expanded to include employees working for the Federal Government.

COLLEEN KELLEY: Fears disparate treatment.

Approximately 1.8 million Federal employees will be covered under the new regulations, but only a small number are expected to be affected by the changes, according to the Society for Human Resources Management, a non-profit think tank made up of HR professionals.

Minimal 'Private' Impact

SHRM based its assertion on the results of a May 2005 survey it conducted among private-sector workers. SHRM found that less than 1 percent of those workers lost their overtime eligibility after the Labor Department changed its rules, and 1 percent of non-Federal employees who hadn't been eligible gained the right to automatic overtime.

But the two largest unions representing Federal workers - the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees' Union - have called upon the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to amend its proposed changes to the "white-collar" regulations.

Those new regulations, according to statements made by OPM earlier this summer, are meant to identify the executive, administrative and professional Federal employees who are exempt from the overtime provisions mandated in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Tied to Classification

Current Labor Department rules - which are consistent with the FLSA - award overtime pay eligibility to workers based on their job classification. Employees classified as GS-4 or below are entitled to FLSA rights.

But the new rules would assign eligibility based on salary - anyone earning less than $23,660 annually would be covered under FLSA. Those earning more would no longer be automatically entitled to overtime pay.

Colleen Kelley, president of NTEU, said in comments submitted to the OPM that a pay-based system would lead to "irrational disparities."

Ms. Kelley pointed out that GS-4 employees in some parts of the country would lose the protection of the FLSA because their higher locality pay pushes them beyond the salary limit.

'No Logic to This'

"In fact, some employees at the GS-2 or even GS-1 levels could lose their overtime rights," Ms. Kelley said. "There clearly is no logic in adopting a dollarfigure test that results in such disparate treatment depending on an employee's location." The AFGE and NTEU also argued that changes to the "white-collar" rules are necessary to reconcile FLSA regulations with the Federal Government's employee classification system.

Both unions point out that the OPM previously rejected the adoption of a minimum salary level as a method of determining overtime eligibility. OPM had said then that assessing FLSA rights based on grade level "makes more sense than using absolute dollar figures."

An OPM spokesperson declined to comment on the agency's new position on the Labor Department rules, but said that OPM was currently reviewing some of the public comments it had received.

50,000 Affected?

The OPM maintains that the number of employees who could be affected by the changes would be "quite small." An estimated 50,000 would lose automatic eligibility if the "white-collar" rules are enacted, according to published reports.

Ms. Kelley said that "having previously rejected a minimum-salary test as illsuited for use with the government's classification system, OPM cannot now adopt such a test without even attempting to explain why harmonizing with DOL's [new] rules suddenly makes sense."