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ISSA Requests Stakeholder Meetings Prior to Potential New Overtime Regulations

ISSA joined 109 other organizations, which represent a wide range of employers from private industry, states, municipalities, universities, colleges, K-12 schools, and nonprofits, to request that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) hold stakeholder meetings prior to the development and issuance of the department’s anticipated Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the “exemption of bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime requirements” (also known as the “white-collar” exemptions).

In the Fall 2021 Regulatory Agenda, DOL’s Wage and Hour Division announced its plans to issue an NPRM modifying the white-collar overtime exemptions in April 2022. In a January 25 letter to DOL Secretary Marty Walsh, the signatories explained that “This will be a significant rulemaking with respect to cost, difficulty in implementation and impact on the workforce, particularly given the current acute labor shortages. Our organizations urge DOL to follow past precedents and hold meetings with the regulated community to obtain input on the potential impact of any changes to the overtime exemption requirements.”

The letter goes on to state that “The labor markets today are very different than when both the Trump and Obama administrations updated the regulations. In development of an appropriate proposed rule, DOL would benefit from stakeholder insights into the current economic environment and the practical implications certain policies could have on the economy, workers, and the employer community. Such meetings were held by the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations prior to undergoing the notice-and-comment rulemaking process to update the exemptions.”

Since 2014, when U.S. President Barack Obama first directed the DOL “to modernize and streamline the existing overtime regulations,” ISSA has actively pushed for more reasonable overtime rules than proposed. In our 2015 comments to the DOL, ISSA pointed out these regulations would cost our members “US$100,000 to well over $750,000 annually, depending on the size of the company and the number of employees.”

ISSA previously submitted comments to the DOL and was cited in the previous rulemaking, which reduced the salary threshold from $47,000 down to a more manageable $35,308.

Please visit here for more ISSA resources related to overtime rules and register for the 2022 ISSA Clean Advocacy Summit, March 30-31 in Washington, DC, as part of National Cleaning Week. ISSA will continue to monitor and advocate for its members and the cleaning industry on this issue. For questions about overtime regulations, please contact ISSA Director of Government Affairs John Nothdurft.