On November 7th, LeadingAge submitted a comment letter to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division, raising concerns about the Department’s proposed rule defining the overtime exemptions for executive, administrative, and professional employees under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. DOL’s proposal, released in September, would significantly increase the standard salary level required for exemption, and it would establish a system for automatically updating these thresholds on a regular basis going forward.
LeadingAge agrees that it is appropriate for the Department to update the minimum salary level from time to time. However, their comments emphasized their serious concern that the cost of the proposed increase will be difficult for many organizations to absorb without significant impacts to their operations, and LeadingAge asked the Department to implement a smaller increase than the one proposed. Among other issues, LeadingAge explained that aging services providers are heavily dependent on public healthcare programs that often provide inadequate payment for services, and that wage variation throughout the country means the proposed rule may have a disproportionate impact on rural providers. This LeadingAge article provides background on the proposed rule, along with a summary of their comments and a link to the letter they submitted to the Department.
