NEW YORK: The Labor Department on will stop accepting public comments on its proposed rule to force businesses to pay workers more overtime. The comment period was unusually short for such a major change, just 60 days. Business lobbyists say this wasn’t the first time either the administration has done this, either.”We asked for a simple extension. We were denied,” Randy Johnson, vice president for labor policy at the Chamber of Commerce, told reporters.
“We’re scrambling to make to the Friday deadline.”The shortened timeframe is significant because the public comment periods are a key part of the legal challenges to rules. Registering objections to proposed federal regulations help create legal standing for the objector to later challenge the rule in court later.It is a key part of what many trade associations do. On the more significant rulemakings, the Obama administration sometimes has forced the groups to scramble to file their comments in time.
The overtime rule in particular has many business lobbyists steaming.On July 6, the Labor Department announced the proposed rule, which would raise the “white-collar exemption,” the minimum annual wage workers can earn before their employers deem them “managerial” and therefore exempt from overtime pay requirements, from about $23,000 to $50,000. It announced it would accept comments through Sept 4.That gave trade associations representing employers just July and August to research the issue and the department’s proposal in all its minutiae and to formulate their responses.
