A change in federal labor law, originally scheduled to take effect in December, has colleges and universities scrambling to sort out what to do now that a federal judge has blocked the change.
And with the incipient arrival of the Trump administration, expected to be friendly to businesses and against new regulations, the policy may well never take effect.
Under the new policy, salaried employees would have been due extra pay if they worked more than 40 hours in a week.
The new policy, a change in the Fair Labor Standards Act, would have made more full-time salaried employees eligible for overtime pay. Those employees who earned up to $47,000 per year would have been eligible for extra pay for work over 40 hours a week; currently only those who earn up to $23,000 per year are.
Administrators agree that an update in the rule was overdue. While living costs have risen, the salary threshold hadn’t been changed since 2004. But many observers expected a gradual increase, not a doubling.
The new policy was expected to prove especially challenging for small, private colleges, already facing tight budgets, and campuses outside major urban areas, where living costs and salaries are lower and more employees may be affected.
