The Biden administration wants to raise the threshold for overtime pay

Any salaried grocery employee earning less than $55,068 a year would be entitled to overtime pay under a regulatory change proposed Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

Currently, employers do not have to pay time and a half to salaried workers when they work more than 40 hours per week if their base pay exceeds $35,568 annually.

The change would raise the overtime cut-off by 55%, or from $684 per week to $1,059.

In addition, the proposed rule calls for resetting the exemption threshold every three years to keep pace with changes in compensation levels.  

If adopted as currently written, the new regulations would entitle 3.6 million more salaried employees to overtime, according to DOL.

It is not known how many of those 3.6 million work in the grocery retail segment. 

“For too long, many low-paid salaried workers have been denied overtime pay, even though they often work long hours and perform much of the same work as their hourly counterparts,” Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement.  

Under the federal rule-making process, the public will have 60 days to comment on the proposed changes. DOL will then review the input and publish a final rule.

This story originally appeared in WGB sister publication Restaurant Business. It has been modified slightly.