So basically they increased they federal minimum wage for salary employees. By a LOT. This is a huge huge increase for a lot of people. And it is recalculated for further automatic increases every 3 years. I personally know people who will benefit massively from this.
And yet I never heard about it. I would actually give a point to the Biden administration for this...it's a good and meaningful, if small, systemic change. I asked the turbolibs in my life about it....they didn't know. I asked folks who are going to be receiving this increase...they didn't know why they were getting it. Some of them didn't even know they were getting it. They just thought their boss was being nice. A few didn't know they were getting it at all and will probably just be surprised when suddenly their paycheck is bigger.
Like how are you not leading with stuff like this? Hey millions of Americans who wants a $10,000 plus raise automatically? It doesn't impact hourly employees so it still leaves a lot of the working class out, but many many working class people are salaried and below this threshold and will benefit a lot from this. How is this not plastered on every billboard? "Dear America look how much of a raise we got you."
They didn't want to win on the economy. If they did they would have led with things like this. They wanted to win on their thirst for blood. I think the fact that nobody knew about this change is compelling evidence enough.
Obama apparently tried to do this and had to walk it back due to a supreme Court ruling.
however, the giant institution I worked for at the time was already too far into their transition plan to accommodate the new rule, so they raised up all qualifying* positions.
a key feature of that transition plan was based around the exception to overtime protections for 3 professions: doctors, lawyers and teachers*.
(one of these things is not like the others!)
yes, my former employer reclassified a metric shitload of consultant/community organizer positions into "teachers" and launched a big campaign to "recognize" the important educational value of their work pretending this campaign had nothing to do with the minimum salaried worker rule change.
anyway, just a little context to this.