Courthouse Steps: DOL Overtime Rule - Podcast
On Thursday, August 31, Judge Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas invalidated the Department of Labor’s Overtime Rule, which would have increased the minimum salary level for overtime-exempt employees from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $913 per week ($47,476 annually). Maury Baskin and Tammy McCutchen of Littler Mendelson joined us to discuss the decision and its significance.
Featuring:
Shareholder, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Maury Baskin focuses his Washington, DC-based practice on national labor policy, challenging excessive government regulation on behalf of small and large businesses, while advising employers in compliance issues. He has extensive experience in dealing with labor relations and union pressure tactics, employment discrimination and wage and hour law. He has represented a variety of industry sectors, advising clients involved in construction, government contracting, higher education, telecommunications, hospitality, security, and nonprofits.
Mr. Baskin has served as lead counsel at all levels of the federal and state courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court, and has recently led successful challenges against nationwide federal labor regulations on behalf of multi-industry coalitions, including the 2016 “white collar” overtime rule and the so-called “blacklisting” rule. He has also succeeded in the courts in numerous cases involving the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Department of Labor (DOL). Mr. Baskin is the Chair of Littler's Construction Industry Group and has long represented the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) national trade association and many of its construction industry members. On their behalf, he has been one of the leading advocates against government-mandated project labor agreements, prevailing wage expansion, and union corporate campaigns.
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.