Fox Accentuates the Positive in the New Overtime Rules
Reported by Ellen - August 22, 2004 -
Fox Reporter Steve Brown emphasized in his FOXNews.com video report Good or Bad? that the new overtime rules going into effect Monday, August 23, will mean higher pay for millions of Americans. Yet he ignored the lead of the AP story also posted on FOXNews.com which said that the "the Bush administration is delivering to its business allies an election-year plum they've sought for decades."
Instead, Brown opened with the news that a dry-cleaning worker named Ethel Shaw "is in line for a pay hike" thanks to the new rules. Brown goes on to say that "These regulations ensure overtime protection for millions in the workforce."
What's not mentioned is this imortant information, reported in the Washington Post's Rules for Overtime Pay to Take Effect. "Other than the higher threshold for automatic overtime eligibility, every change in the new regulations means less overtime protection for workers, said a report released last month by John Fraser, Monica Gallagher and Gail Coleman -- three of the highest-ranking Labor officials under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. 'More classes of workers, and a greater proportion of the workforce overall, will be exempt than we believe the Congress could have originally intended,' they wrote."
Brown's report does touch on some of the controversy of the new rules but he frames it as a labor union complaint, saying that "labor unions and their allies are upset with some of the rule changes, especially those that allow employers to reclassify white collar, middle-class workers as managers."
He makes it sound like the unions are whining that managers should get overtime, rather than making the point that employers may now be able to reclassify jobs so as to avoid overtime eligibility. For example, the Washington Post article states, "Salaried workers who fall between $23,660 and $100,000 a year might lose overtime based on a duties test, which describes the tasks that determine whether a worker can, for example, be classified as a professional ineligible for overtime."
There's a whole lot of people out there struggling on amounts above $23,660 a year who could lose pay from the new rules but Brown either didn't realize that or chose to ignore that fact. Rather, he concludes his piece by saying that so many more workers are going to be paid more that businesses are worried they may have to raise their prices. That's certainly not the consensus of the articles on this topic at Google News.
