Weekly Timesheet
Weekly Timesheet picture
By Jorge Rennella
On Aug. 31, Texas Federal Judge Amos Mazzant overturned a new legal framework implemented by the Obama administration, which would have made more than 4.2 million workers eligible for overtime pay, a measure that directly affects restaurants.
The change allows employers to pay workers overtime worked, not with money, but with an hour and a half of free time for each extra hour worked. It also lowers the minimum earnings threshold that entitles employees to overtime.
Limit Changed to $23,660
Since 2004, employees earning less than $23,660 a year - or $455 a week – have been entitled to overtime if they worked more than 40 hours a week, at time and a half.
In May 2016, the Obama Administration pushed the overtime limit to less than $47,476 per year - $913 per week. The change was to have been implemented on December 1, 2016. Twenty states and several groups of merchants challenged its implementation, and Judge Mazzant ruled that the Obama Administration's labor department exceeded its authority.
"This benefits big chains and companies with a large number of employees more than us,” said Francisco Cardenas, owner of Nacho Macho Taco in New York, which has 40 employees in its two locations. “However, the change does affect businesses with less than 80 employees because paying with time instead of money [may cause workers to leave] and we must replace them, which would not be easy and could create problems.”
Last December, opponents resisted the implementation of the Obama Administration-mandated legislation and proposed a new plan called the Flexibility of Working Families Act, which kept the 2004 wage threshold and changed the payment of time and half overtime to payment with free time.
Extra Free Time Instead of Time and a Half
The last change in the process being implemented is that if a worker works 45 hours in a week, he will have 7 hours paid time off the following week - 1.5 hours of leave per overtime hour.
While this ruling was well received by most restaurateurs, retailers, conservative and Republican-led groups, others argued that it will affect the pocket of the workers they depend on.
"These workers weren’t asking for a handout -- they are working 50-60 hours a week and aren’t getting paid for it," Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, said in a statement.
Jorge Rennella is a writer and translator for el Restaurante.