I'm all for giving workers more money, but I wanted to point out a little something about the haste and waste of our MI legislature.
These are the folks who didn't want to raise the minimum wage in the first place, claiming it would "cost jobs", but yet decided to leave in a loophole that would give overtime pay to thousands that didn't have it before, potentially giving some businesses a major headache.
Michigan's new higher minimum wage law could mean more money for tens of thousands of workers -- many of whom already are well paid -- because they'll be eligible for overtime pay for the first time.
It's a hidden twist in the wage law signed last month that could cause payroll headaches for employers.
Lawmakers may move to plug the overtime loophole before the minimum wage rises on Oct. 1, from $5.15 an hour to $6.95 an hour.
The quirk applies to 12 classes of workers -- including car salespeople, mechanics, truck drivers and nannies -- who are exempt from overtime eligibility under federal law as long as Michigan's minimum wage is the same or less than the federal minimum wage.
But when Michigan's minimum pay exceeds the federal rate in October, exemptions for overtime pay -- time and a half when employees work more than 40 hours a week -- would expire.
Unless the law is changed, overtime requirements will kick in for truck drivers, salespeople and mechanics at automobile dealerships, movie theater employees, commercial fishermen and seamen, live-in babysitters and employees at small newspapers and radio and TV stations.
Doctors and lawyers paid by the hour would be eligible for overtime pay, as well as salespeople who work on commission.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm knew of the overtime changes when she signed the bill last month, said her spokeswoman, Liz Boyd.
"The governor knew that," Boyd said. "She enthusiastically signed the bill."
Ari Adler, spokesman for Senate Republicans, said it's not certain that the new minimum wage law will require overtime pay for now-exempt workers. But he added, "If it's interpreted differently and it becomes an issue, then we'll look at addressing it."
House Republicans were aware of the bill's impact on overtime -- business groups quietly cautioned them -- but they decided to pass it quickly and deal later with fallout, said GOP spokesman Matt Resch.
"We'll see what we need to do to address it," he said. "It all happened so quickly."
These guys are amazingly incompetent. After all their caterwauling about having to pay people more money- they go and knowingly leave something like this in there and say "we'll deal with it later".
I'm going to have to find my thesaurus and pull out more words for "incompetent". Don't want to be redundant here.