The U.S. Department of Labor will likely propose changes before April in the regulations for compensating supervisory personnel like restaurant managers, according to the National Restaurant Association.
The proposed rule changes will address the interest by President Obama in updating overtime-pay rules, which he cited as a priority during last week’s State of the Union address. In the past he’s expressed a conviction that the exemption of low-level managers from overtime wage and hour rules no longer fits workplace realities.
The suggestions from DOL will be issued in response to the President’s request a year ago that the matter be re-examined, Scott DeFife, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said today during the group’s annual sales and trends forecast.
Unit-level restaurant managers are typically salaried employees who do not qualify for overtime pay, as an hourly employee would by law. A number of restaurateurs have been sued for overtime pay by their managers, who argue that they routinely spend much of a 40-plus-hour week doing the same tasks that hourlies perform, and hence should be compensated accordingly.
DeFife noted that the NRA would respond accordingly to the DOL proposals.
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