By a margin of 75-18 percent, Michigan voters support expanding overtime pay eligibility among salaried workers, according to a new poll.

The survey by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA found broad, bipartisan backing for state legislation that would require time-and-a-half overtime pay for those earning up to $47,000 a year when they work more than 40 hours in a week.

The current OT requirement facing business owners is set at $23,660, which means that only 8 percent of the salaried labor force – at a poverty-level income for a family of four – qualifies for mandatory overtime pay.

“With support at 75 percent, it’s clear that strengthening rules for overtime pay for salaried workers is a change voters say should happen,” said Bernie Porn, president of EPIC-MRA. “It is critically important for all politicians to understand that this change is not just supported by 85 percent of Democrats, but it is also supported by 65 percent of independents and 67 percent of Republicans.”

The intent of the legislation is to boost overtime eligibility to where it was decades ago, before inflation chopped away at its significance. The OT rule would not apply to white-collar categories such as executives and administrators.

The Obama administration ordered an expansion of overtime pay in 2016, which would have benefited as many as 275,000 Michigan workers. But before it could go into effect, it was blocked by a lawsuit filed by a group of Republican state attorneys general, including Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette.

When a federal court issued an injunction in the AG’s favor last year, the Trump administration happily declined to appeal, in effect killing Obama’s drawn-out effort to update OT standards.

State Senator Jim Ananich (D-Flint) introduced the legislation in 2016 to broaden overtime pay in Michigan, and the governor could alter OT rules through an executive order.

Governors in Pennsylvania, Washington State, California and New York have already boosted their state’s overtime eligibility to the inflation-adjusted level of $47,000.

President George W. Bush ordered a slight boost in OT eligibility in 2004. Prior to that, the last time the salary threshold was adjusted upward was in 1975 by President Ford when 60 percent of salaried workers qualified.

The EPIC-MRA statewide survey was commissioned by two nonprofit advocacy groups for workers, the State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and the National Employment Law Project Action Fund (NELP Action).

 

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