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The Obama administration on Tuesday announced new rules that will increase paychecks for low-and-middle-income workers by making millions of Americans eligible for overtime pay, reports USA Today:

While some businesses welcome the measure, many say it will simply force them to reshuffle salaries to get around the regulation. Others fear it will mean demoting white-collar workers and altering workplace cultures.

The rule, slated to be formally released Wednesday, would essentially double the threshold at which executive, administrative and professional employees are exempt from overtime pay to $47,476 from the current $23,660. That’s expected to make 4.2 million additional workers eligible to receive time-and-a-half wages for each hour they put in beyond 40 a week.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said the salary threshold was originally intended to exempt high-paid executives but instead has denied overtime to low-level retail supervisors and entry-level office workers who often toil 50 to 70 hours a week.

“Too few people are getting the overtime that (federal law) intended,” he told reporters. “It’s simply not right.”

Vice President Joe Biden called the new policy a “critical part of the White House’s goal of ‘restoring and expanding access to the middle class. The middle class is getting clobbered.’”

SOURCE: USA Today | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty | VIDEO CREDIT: Inform

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Scores Of Americans To Be Eligible For Overtime Pay  was originally published on newsone.com