Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The nation’s largest independent federal union has added its voice to a chorus of criticism aimed at changes proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) in regulations identifying which employees are exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as executive, administrative and professional workers.

In comments submitted to DOL, National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley called the proposal “seriously flawed” and said it “demonstrably fails to achieve the purported goal”—a balance between the desire of employers for clear and unambiguous regulatory standards and the desire of employees for fair and equitable treatment in the workplace.

“Virtually every proposed change tips the scales in favor of management,” President Kelley said in NTEU’s written submission to DOL. Millions of workers who now receive overtime pay could be reclassified as exempt from FLSA overtime coverage under the proposed broadened definition of executive, administrative and professional employees, she said.

The NTEU leader noted that DOL’s own estimate is that between 2.1 million and 3.3 million additional workers in the private sector would become exempt from the overtime pay requirement under the proposed changes; other estimates have put the number at as many as eight million workers who would lose their eligibility for overtime pay.

NTEU, President Kelley said, often pursues FLSA actions on behalf of federal workers in court as well as in the grievance and arbitration procedures.

Any DOL rule changes will ultimately affect the union’s overtime proceedings. “Although the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) administers the FLSA in the federal sector,” she said, OPM’s regulations must be “consistent” with DOL’s FLSA rules, differing only to the extent necessary to accommodate variances between federal and private sector personnel systems.

The DOL proposals, Kelley said, “conflict with more than a half-century of interpretation of the FLSA framework” and would effectively reverse these long-established principles by presuming exemption based on a modicum of evidence and expanding each of the white-collar categories beyond any precedent.

The DOL proposals “use numerous methods to narrow the scope of coverage and broaden the white-collar exemptions of the FLSA overtime provisions,” President Kelley said, including raising the minimum salary tests and warping the key concept of “primary duty.” The only way “to be true to the statutory mandate” of the FLSA, she added, is for DOL to fix the many problems identified by NTEU before adopting final regulations.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents over 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments.