Up to 8 million U.S. workers could lose their right to overtime pay if Bush administration rules are put in place, according to a new study released Thursday. The new proposed rules would dramatically change who qualifies as a salaried worker, and which hourly wage earners are able to collect overtime.

    The report, by the Economic Policy Institute, highlights dozens of professions that would be impacted by the new rules and argues that hundreds of thousands of workers could be moved from hourly wages to a fixed salary. It would also expand the types of work responsibilities that can be barred from overtime, and would cap a right to overtime for almost anyone earning more than $65,000 a year.

       The study’s numbers sharply contrast Labor Department estimates that 1.3 million low-wage workers would qualify for overtime under the new rules, while 640,000 professional workers would lose their potential for overtime.

    Some 2.5 million salary earners and 5.5 million hourly employees would lose their overtime, according to the estimates by the group, which is affiliated with labor unions. Some of the most impacted job types would include: mid-level supervisors such as restaurant managers or safety inspectors; professionals such as dietitians, social workers and writers; and technical specialists, such as dental hygienists, drafters or computer programmers. The report’s authors argue the new rules would lead to longer hours for most employees with minimal cost to companies.
      
     “That will have a big impact on their personal family budgets and also on their hours of work,” said EPI vice president and policy director Ross Eisenbray. “It’ll be more profit, but it won’t end up in worker paychecks.”

    The proposed regulatory changes, which amount to an overhaul of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, were first released last March by the Labor Department. A public comment period ends Monday, though no public hearings were scheduled. They could be implemented as soon as this fall and the administration wants them in place by next year. If so, it would be the first major overhaul of the overtime rules in nearly 30 years.

       Among those changes would be to raise the baseline salary under which all employees qualify for overtime. Right now, standards still employ a figure from 1975: Anyone earning less than $155 per week automatically qualifies. The new rules would raise that to $425 per week, or about $22,000 a year.

NEW CATEGORIES

    According to the study, the changes’ real impact would be in how workers are defined:

Some employees are currently exempt because they hold advanced degrees or did postgraduate study. But most white-collar workers with any education beyond high school would be placed in a category of “learned professional” and would likely be exempt — unable to earn overtime. Many “learned” professions would now allow on-the-job experience to replace academic training: chefs or practical nurses might be exempted from overtime because academic study is largely vocational in nature. The Labor Department argues that would simply give credit for “equivalent knowledge and skills” gained outside academic programs.

Workers would no longer be required to exercise decision-making and judgment in order to be considered a professional, or to mostly do “production” work in order to gain overtime rights. Instead, an employee considered to be in a “position of responsibility” could be made exempt.

Overtime exemptions for “executive” employees would be expanded to many lower-level supervisors who manage just a handful of employees, such as fire sergeants or retail sales supervisors. Even if employees who mostly perform routine, non-exempt tasks can still be made exempt. In one example the study cites, someone who stocks shelves could be considered an exempt employee if they also spend some time handling customer complaints.
       
IMPACT ON PAYROLLS

    The Bush administration and business groups argue the changes are necessary to reflect a growing service sector in the economy, and to spur economic growth and hiring practices. Among the arguments is that by paying less overtime to more highly skilled workers, employers would have more money in their payroll to hire new employees and reduce the unemployment rolls.

    Many businesses also support the Labor Department’s argument that the new rules will simplify how workers are segmented based on the type of work they do. Some business owners, for example, would like to see an end to the “production dichotomy” — the split between workers who “produce” and those who supervise. Those divisions, they argue, are representative of the labor act’s 1939 origins in an industrial economy and don’t reflect modern times