On Secretary Acosta’s Announcement of an Upcoming Request for Information on Overtime

Washington, DC—Following is a statement from Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project:

At his budget hearing this morning, Secretary Acosta announced that the Department of Labor is issuing a new request for information on the overtime rule—a startling signal of the Trump team’s willingness to roll back long-overdue overtime protections for as many as 12 million workers.

Last year, the Department published its final rule on overtime after a years-long rulemaking process that involved dozens of stakeholder meetings and consideration of over 270,000 public comments from individuals and entities. The final rule, which reflects that input and is based on a methodology consistent with decades of prior practice, raised the previously outdated salary threshold to $47,476—meaning that any worker earning less is guaranteed time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours in a given week.

It’s not clear what additional information the Department will now be seeking. Nonetheless, we urge the Department not to let this request for information get in the way of ensuring that workers continue to have the updated protections they so desperately need under last year’s final rule.