Synopsis for Seyfarth: January 4, 2023, Biden Administration announced its release Fall 2022 Unified Agenda for Regulation and DeregulationRelated to the administration’s new regulatory agenda, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wages and Hours Division has a number of ambitious rulemakings on the horizon, including a May target for revised standards for the FLSA’s white-collar exemption. increase.
As we head into Winter 2023, the Biden administration announced its Fall 2022 regulatory agenda. Here we focus on the Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) rulemaking plan. The numbers may be limited, but the impact on employers can be huge.
When it last blogged about the Biden administration’s efforts to raise the minimum salary that employers must pay most exempt employees, the DOL said, “Definitions and divisions of administrative, administrative exemptions, professional, outside Sales, and computer employees” in October 2022. With this rulemaking, WHD is expected to strive to achieve this target in a timely manner. Therefore, employers should monitor her WHD signal types for FLSA overtime requirements under exemptions for executive, managerial, professional, and computer employees. One of the most likely and impactful changes is an increase in the minimum salary for exempt status. It’s currently $684 per week, which translates to $35,568 annually.
Once the NPRM and its proposed minimum salary are published, DOL will provide time for public comment. WHD will then take several months to consider the comments submitted and develop and implement a final rule. We’ve seen President Obama’s attempt to amend his FLSA exemption rules run into legal trouble. And the same could happen with this effort, depending on how high the salary threshold gets. It remains possible that new regulations will be issued in 2023 or 2024.
Another important rule currently in the proposed rule stage is WHD’s Classification of Employees or Independent Contractors Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. According to rules.gov, the DOL’s NPRM on this rulemaking has received 54,000 comments, so WHD will review its public input into a final rule by a proposed deadline (also he has May 2023). Please ask if it can be included. The large number of comments suggests that several interested parties can also challenge the rule in court. In fact, several commenters appeared to be making legal arguments in their submissions. See our previous blog for more information if you have an independent contract.
For those who live in Ben, where the worlds of wage hours and government contracts overlap, WHD has some rules.
- WHD is working to implement the regulations in Executive Order 14055, “No Disposal of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts,” which requires contractors and their subcontractors awarded federal service contracts to “predecessors.” provides qualified employees employed under contracts with a first refusal of employment.” successor contract. The regulatory agenda suggests that WHD may still be considering comments on the proposal, so the timing of the final rule remains unclear.
- Finally, the only WHD rule listed on the DOL’s regulatory agenda at the final rule stage is titled “Updates to the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Regulations.” Initialize, “[t]The ministry proposed updating and modernizing the regulations implementing the Davis-Bacon Act and related laws to make them clearer and more useful in the modern economy. We previously blogged and podcasted about the issuance and impact of this proposed rule, so stay tuned for how the rulemaking could change DOL’s Davis-Bacon’s general wage process. See the resource above. Spoiler alert: The revised protocol could increase general wage rates.
