National Retail Federation Wants To Slow Overtime Law Changes

The National Retail Federation (NRF) wants to slow down legislation of the Labor Department’s new overtime laws because, quite frankly, the lobbying group argues, the new regulations would be bad for business.

The current bill seeks to set the salary limit at $47,476 for workers that companies would be required to pay overtime to, more than doubling the current law of $23,660, according to Chain Store Age.

But the NRF says that the bill would do “substantial damage” to businesses under its current form and is seeking reform measures to mitigate the damage.

Under a proposal from Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), the overtime provision would rise to $36,000 in the first year and then gradually be phased in over the next three years.

“Rep. Schrader’s legislation will help blunt the damage to America’s job creators that the reckless new overtime rules will cause unless Congress takes action by December,” NRF Senior VP for Government Relations David French said in a statement. “The Labor Department’s changes to the overtime threshold are too much, too fast, for both employers and employees to adjust to without serious negative consequences for both. The Schrader bill addresses the ‘too fast’ part of the problem, and we support it.”

According to a study that NRF commissioned, the new law would force employers to limit hours or cut employees’ actual base pay to make up for the added — and unbudgeted — new costs to their companies’ payrolls. Under this study, the average worker would still basically take home the exact same amount in their paychecks each week (if not less).