WASHINGTON—Members of the Senate Small Business Committee debated whether the Labor Department’s proposed rule on overtime pay needs reform or whether more information on its impact is needed.
Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) both spoke about doing further analysis of the proposal, and Heitkamp noted that she is concerned about how it might affect university employees and non-profit employees who are “on-call.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) touted his legislation, the “Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act,” which would require the Labor Department to withdraw its proposal and start over with an eye to potential unintended consequences.
The Labor Department’s proposal, issued last summer, would allow certain full-time, salaried workers making less than $50,440 annually to be eligible for overtime.
NAFCU Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt wrote committee leaders in advance of this week’s hearing to raise concerns that credit unions might be disproportionately impacted by the rule. NAFCU said it supports fair overtime rules, but has raised concerns about some of the proposed changes’ impact on credit unions.
In a letter Wednesday to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle wrote that the DoL proposal would disproportionately impact credit unions in rural and underserved areas and could force credit unions to limit services.
“We are greatly concerned about the detrimental consequences the DOL’s rule could have for small credit unions, as well as for larger credit unions, who also are more susceptible to suffer as a result of regulatory burdens than the largest financial institutions,” Nussle wrote.