University of Washington Human Resources

U.S. Department of Labor Announces Proposed FLSA Changes

Significant changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are under consideration by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and will likely go into effect late this year or in early 2020. These revisions will significantly impact over 2,000 employees by:

• Raising the thresholds for which positions can be exempt from FLSA overtime provisions;
• Requiring the tracking of time; and
• Paying for all hours worked, as well as paying time-and-a-half for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek.

Proposed Change in Salary Basis Minimum

Today, salaried employees who earn less than $455 per week ($23,660 per year) are automatically entitled to overtime. DOL has proposed increasing the “salary basis minimum” to $679 per week ($35,308 per year). This minimum also applies to part-time salaried employees.

• Potential Impact: Approximately 200 professional and classified staff would move from being overtime exempt to overtime eligible. In addition, a number of non-teaching academic personnel may also become overtime eligible, including librarians and about 1,700 graduate student research assistants and graduate student staff assistants.
• Labor Implications: The University will need to communicate with their respective unions to bargain the impact to classified overtime exempt employees and academic student employees.

We will share more definite information as soon as we receive it. In the meantime, a list of employees whose current salary and FTE place them below the proposed higher salary basis minimum will be distributed to major organization administrators in March 2019.

Headcount by organization of employees who will no longer meet federal (FLSA) minimum salary requirements for OT Exemption: