Americans making $36,000 or more a year don't qualify for overtime. Biden could fix that right now. (by paulconstant of PitchforkEcon)
. Baram said politicians on both sides of the aisle allowed the overtime threshold to stagnate, and today it sits at an embarrassingly low level.
As trickle-down economics gained dominance, he explained, politicians allowed worker protections to atrophy because they believed it was more important to prioritize shareholder primacy over employee pay — in other words, putting corporate profits over paychecks.who earned a $24,000 annual salary in 2015 was ineligible for overtime pay because her salary was just above the threshold, despite working 10 to 15 hours per week over the 40-hour workweek.
The"insidious" slow erosion of overtime standards means that"people get used to this new miserable situation," Baram said on the podcast."They have no expectations of anything better." Hanauer added that employers get more than just free labor with low overtime standards. If they're squeezing, say, 10 extra hours from their employees every week, they're getting the productivity of five workers out of every four employees.