[arpyzo]

Why should there be a ceiling on this at all? Just because someone makes more money does not mean it should be acceptable to abuse their time in the workplace. Most people earn high incomes, not because they signed up to meet arbitrary demands, but because they invested in education and training, and/or agreed to take on a high level of responsibility.

[aidenn0]

The ceiling makes sense because a high salary is a reasonable proxy for individual bargaining power. I'm sure I could convince my manager to let me work strictly 9-5 in exchange for halving my salary (which would still put me over the 55k mark).

[wenebego]

Okay, so what about those making 60k?

[aidenn0]

1. Yes, when you have a hard cutoff for anything you get strange behaviors near the boundaries.

2. Are you saying there should be no cutoff (graduated or hard) anywhere, so that CEOs with total-compensation in the millions get paid overtime?

3. At a 40 hour week that's about $30 per hour, quadruple the federal minimum wage[A]. If you are salaried and making more than quadruple the minimum wage than you are more likely to have negotiating power than if you are making less than quadruple the minimum wage.

4. There's also a disconnect between the law and actual company behavior; the salary is only one test in the law; companies often give bogus job titles to reclassify non-exempt employees as exempt. This is rather clearly illegal.

A: Yes states can set higher minimum wages. They can also place extra restrictions on who is exempt from overtime laws (and probably should do so in this case) TFA is about federal law, so I'm addressing it as such.

[H8crilA]

This concept of "eligibility for overtime" is so far beyond reason that it looks shocking even for the ultra low American standards. Having a law that literally forbids worker compensation would be a reason to remove government almost anywhere in the world. It's like something from a Monty Python sketch, produced in the building next to the Silly Walks department.

The only people "not eligible for overtime" are those that cannot work overtime due to medical (or other similar) reasons.

[dragonwriter]

> Having a law that literally forbids worker compensation

The law doesn’t forbid overtime for people making over the listed amount, it means that employers aren’t federally mandated to pay overtime (and certain other things) for employees making above a certain base-pay threshold.

Not only is it allowed to pay overtime to people making over the federal threshold, there are states where it is mandatory – just as with minimum wage, there are states that have exemption pay thresholds (and other exemption requirements) that make many federally-exempt jobs not exempt under state law, such that overtime pay is still required.

[gizmo686]

There is no law that prevents employers from offering overtime pay to people with a salary over the limit.