Volume 1, Issue 11

CONTENTS — ART. 1. DOL NOPR… — ART. 2. PARTY LINE: UBS

Article 1

Department of Labor notice of proposed rulemaking could upset labor-management relations

By Antarah Crawley

WASHINGTON, DC — In September 2023, the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor (DOL) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) to amend 29 CFR Part 541, to wit, Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales, and Computer Employees.

The Summary section of the proposed rulemaking reads:

In this proposal, the Department of Labor (Department) is updating and revising the regulations issued under the Fair Labor Standards Act implementing the exemptions from minimum wage and overtime pay requirements for executive, administrative, professional, outside sales, and computer employees. Significant proposed revisions include increasing the standard salary level to the 35th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage Census Region (currently the South)—$1,059 per week ($55,068 annually for a full-year worker)—and increasing the highly compensated employee total annual compensation threshold to the annualized weekly earnings of the 85th percentile of full-time salaried workers nationally ($143,988). The Department is also proposing to add to the regulations an automatic updating mechanism that would allow for the timely and efficient updating of all the earnings thresholds.

Summary

This means that employees of covered employers who make less that $55,068 will no longer be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLRA) minimum wage and overtime regulations as “white-collar” or executive, administrative, or professional (EAP) employees. The NOPR Executive Summary reads:

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA or Act) requires covered employers to pay employees a minimum wage and, for employees who work more than 40 hours in a week, overtime premium pay of at least 1.5 times the employee’s regular rate of pay. Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA, which was included in the original Act in 1938, exempts from the minimum wage and overtime pay requirements “any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity.” ^[1] The exemption is commonly referred to as the “white-collar” or executive, administrative, or professional (EAP) exemption. The statute delegates to the Secretary of Labor (Secretary) the authority to define and delimit the terms of the exemption. Since 1940, the regulations implementing the EAP exemption have generally required that each of the following three tests must be met: (1) the employee must be paid a predetermined and fixed salary that is not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of work performed (the salary basis test); (2) the amount of salary paid must meet a minimum specified amount (the salary level test); and (3) the employee’s job duties must primarily involve executive, administrative, or professional duties as defined by the regulations (the duties test). The employer bears the burden of establishing the applicability of the exemption.^[2] Job titles and job descriptions do not determine EAP exemption status, nor does merely paying an employee a salary.

Executive Summary

This proposed rulemaking is causing some employers to reclassify employees who have historically been salaried full-time employees (FTE) with “white collar” exemption to wage-hour employees.

These changes are agitating labor-management relations, creating sharper contradiction in the employer-employee dialectic (“struggle of opposites”). Some employers are electing not to raise the compensation of historically EAP employees above the 35th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage Census Region, even if those employees live in the most expensive regions of the country.

The sharpening of this historical and materialist dialectic is resulting in a proportional increase in union activity and may very well catalyze the decentralized autonomous organization of the Office of the Plebian Tribunes as well as shore up the 1st Memorandum of the College of the Ancient Mystery.

Source(s)

Article 2

Party Line re: Union Boss System

By Antarah Crawley

NACOTCHTANK, OD — These planks are hereby promulgated for acceptance into the party platform by the general membership of the Third Wave Antimasonic Party of the United States, from the Village of Nacotchtank-on-Potomac, Ouachita District, which sits on the river bank east of the federal city of Washington:

PLANK NO. 5

The Union Boss System (UBS) is the fractal organization of the regional Party Boss System (PBS) into industrial syndicates.

PLANK NO. 6

The official position of the party with respect to the organization of labor in general (unions) is favorable.

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