Bravo, President Obama

Dear Friends,

A few days ago at dinner with some friends I was roundly criticized for never writing about the good things that President Obama does.  The criticism was, of course, well founded, and I will try to improve in order to present a clearer picture of how President Obama is doing.

There are two very obvious great things that President Obama has done recently to make the lives of American workers better.  The first is that he now supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and tying it to inflation.  Learn more here.  By executive order, he also raised the minimum wage of federal contract workers to $10.10.  Learn more here.

$10.10 translates to about $21,000 for a 40 hour per week 52 week worker.  So this increase in the minimum wage is not sufficient, it is, however, a long overdue and important step in the right direction.

The second great thing that President Obama has done lately to make the lives of American workers better is to direct the Labor Department to issue new rules to increase the eligibility for overtime pay.    The general rule is that supervisors and management personnel are exempt from the requirement to pay overtime pay.  Unfortunately, in practice, millions of American workers who should receive overtime pay do not because their employer can claim that they are "supervisors".  Fortunately, there is also a provision that says if the worker makes less than a certain amount per week, that worker must be paid overtime pay if she/he works more than 40 hours in a week.  The weekly amount set in 1975 if adjusted for inflation would now be $980 per week.  Unfortunately, the current amount is $455 a week set by the Bush Administration in 2004.  If that amount were increased by inflation it would now be $560 a week.

President Obama has not yet said what that weekly pay amount should be, but he has started a process that should lead to an increase.  I hope that President Obama is aggressive and gets the level back to where it would have been if the 1975 level had tied to inflation.  A worker making less than about $50,000 a year should be eligible for overtime pay.  You can learn more here.

President Obama does many good things, and we should keep them in mind as we consider how he is doing as President.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal