If you’re a salaried worker, chances are you’re no longer eligible for the overtime pay that you would have received 40 years ago. A robust federal overtime standard used to serve as a kind of minimum wage for the middle class, providing both a valuable source of extra income and a shield of protection for the 40-hour workweek. When he interviewed workers around the country, Journalist Marcus Baram learned firsthand why we must raise the overtime threshold and restore overtime protections for American workers.

Marcus Baram is a journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The WSJ, Capital + Main, and more

Twitter: @mbaram

(Full disclosure: Civic Ventures is a partial funder of Capital & Main’s inequality reporting project.)

Who Killed Overtime Pay? https://capitalandmain.com/latest-news/the-50-100-pay-gap/who-killed-overtime-pay-the-50-100-pay-gap

America Gave Up on Overtime https://time.com/6168310/overtime-pay-history

 

Nick Hanauer:

I fear that our listeners must be tiring of us whining about the overtime threshold. But given that it is the single most important intervention in economic policy, we are not going to let it go.

David Goldstein:

We’ve called the overtime threshold the minimum wage for the middle class.

Marcus Baram:

Half of the American workers work more than 40 hours a week, 20% work more than 50 hours a week. All these workers are missing out on time-and-a-half.

Speaker 4:

From the home offices of Civic Ventures in Downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

Nick Hanauer:

I’m Nick Hanauer, Founder of Civic Ventures.

David Goldstein:

I’m David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures. One of the things you and I have in common, Nick, is that when we get our teeth into a subject, we don’t like to let go of it, do we?

Nick Hanauer:

No, we do not. No, we do not. And I fear that our listeners must be hiring of us whining about the overtime threshold, but given that it is probably the single most important or potentially important intervention in economic policy that could materially impact middle class people. We are not going to let it go until the Biden administration does the right thing.

David Goldstein:

And a lot of people might be surprised by that assertion of yours or think that you’re … It’s a little hyperbolic to say that it’s one of the single most important policies. But as we’ve talked about before and we’ll talk about again on this episode, we’ve called this the overtime threshold, the minimum wage for the middle class.

Nick Hanauer:

It is.

David Goldstein:

It is a core part of American labor policy and has been since the 1930s and the erosion of overtime, not just this actual threshold, the salary level below which you qualify for time-and-a-half pay, that’s 150% of your regular pay for every hour you work over 40 hours a week. Lot of people might not even be aware that they should be getting this. The erosion of that, the erosion of the knowledge of that has played a huge part in rising in equality in the United States over the past 40 years and in the erosion of the middle class, just the fact that people aren’t aware of it.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, is that it used to be such a central norm in the culture of work in the country that it supported, not just more income for ordinary Americans who used to rely on overtime in many cases for extra things, but it also had a huge role in protecting the lifestyles of families. Because it meant that you just had a lot more time. I mean, the difference between working 40 hours a week routinely or working 60 hours a week routinely for the same pay is the difference between a good life and a shitty one. I mean, it really is. And particularly, again, as I’ve emphasized before, if you’re a highly paid executive or a bond trader on Wall Street making millions a year, screw you. You don’t deserve overtime and don’t need it.

David Goldstein:

And if you choose to work 70 hours a week for all that extra money and in return-

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, good for you.

David Goldstein:

 … you sacrifice having a close relationship with your children because they never see you, well, that’s your choice to make. I don’t know that that’s the right choice, but that’s your choice to make.

Nick Hanauer:

Absolutely, but-

David Goldstein:

That’s different from being a retail worker who’s misclassified as a manager and is working 60, 70 hours a week just to get by and never sees their children.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. And I think a lot of work maybe evolving towards the kind where people should be paid overtime, even so-called white collar work. It just is the case. And I think that reestablishing this norm is so, so important, both to secure the lives of middle class families. But also, as we’ve said, many times, it’s such a big job creator. If you prevent people from turning three 40-hour week jobs into two 60-hour week jobs, boy, you can create a lot of jobs in an economy of our size.

David Goldstein:

But podcast listeners, who’ve heard Nick and I talk about this subject for a long time. You don’t have to take our word for it. Today, we’re talking with Marcus Baram. He’s a journalist who wrote a four-part series in Capital & Main on the overtime rule. And he talked to a lot of the people who are impacted by the erosion of this standard.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, so let’s talk to Marcus.

Marcus Baram:

My name is Marcus Baram. I’m a longtime editor and journalist and reporter and writer. And I did a series of stories about the overtime wage rule for Capital & Main, which is a news nonprofit based in California.

David Goldstein:

As you just mentioned, you did a four-part series about overtime for Capital & Main. Lot of people aren’t even familiar with overtime. What led you to pursue this subject?

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, a good question. I mean, basically, I’ve been focusing on income and equality for Capital & Main. Going back to probably spring of 2021, the publisher of Capital & Main who I’d been co-publishing stories with for many years, brought me in because he wanted to launch a series of stories that were just focused on income inequality. Obviously, it’s a very broad category. He wanted to look at the sources of income inequality, some analysis of it, what’s responsible, and some solutions to reduce the massive income inequality we have in this country.

And so during that, I was assigning stories of all kinds of subjects from the racial wealth gap to rural income inequality, to income inequality in certain sectors of the economy like, obviously, teaching and the manufacturing sector. And along the way, I started to look into overtime pay and came across the statistic that was stunning to me. And in 1975, more than 60% of salaried workers qualified for overtime, which is very, very standard time-and-a-half. We’re all familiar with the concept. And now it’s plummeted to about 15%.

And then actually in 2016, it was as low as 7%. It’d gone from 62%, 63% of salaried full-time workers to, at one point, less than 7%. And that’s just stunning, so all these millions and millions of workers, tens of millions of American workers who are working harder than ever. If you look at surveys, something like half of American workers work more than 40 hours a week, something like 20% work more than 50 hours a week. All these workers were missing out on time-and-a-half, this kind of standard that we’re all used to. And I had no idea about that. And I consider myself pretty savvy about economic issues and trends. But that, right away, it stood out to me as something that deserved a bigger analysis, more in depth research.

David Goldstein:

Right. And to be clear, they’re not just missing out on time-and-a-half. Most of these people are missing out on any pay at all for those extra hours.

Marcus Baram:

It’s true. I mean, and you had that sense that, basically, your hourly pay goes down. If you’re working 50 hours a week, you just do the math. And your hourly pay goes down … What is that?

David Goldstein:

20%.

Marcus Baram:

25%, 20%. You’re missing out on a lot of income. It’s really unfair in a very fundamental way.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, absolutely. And so I just have to ask you, I had the overtime revelation in 2014. As an employer, I had to come to grips with the fact that I had been unconsciously playing this game for most of my career, basically persuading people into working 60 hours for 40 hours’ worth of pay. And when you added up economy wide, the scale of this scam is breathtaking. Don’t get me wrong. If you’re a super highly paid executive, the price of that is to work your ass off. And if that means 70 hours a week, that means 70 hours a week, right?

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, or 90 hours a week.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, whatever it is.

Marcus Baram:

I had friends who work for Goldman Sachs and they were junior associates and they slept in the office. And you’re like, yeah, okay, because you’re going to make millions. I understand that.

Nick Hanauer:

But if you make $40,000 a year as an assistant manager at a retail store or something like that, it is totally absurd. And I guess, I’m asking, I mean, did you have this similar revelation where you’re just like, holy shit, what happened?

Marcus Baram:

I mean, the more you dig into it, the more outraged you get and the more stunning it is. Because I mean, one thing is looking at the salary threshold, which is basically anybody who makes more than that doesn’t qualify-

Nick Hanauer:

At all.

Marcus Baram:

 … for overtime, except for very narrow exceptions, but in general. Basically, that was $8,000 in 1975, roughly $8,000, which at the time was a little more of a average salary for many workers, especially working class and lower middle class workers. But that stayed frozen until 2004. It’s unbelievable that the year 2000, somebody making $10,000 a year, which is a pretty shitty salary, could not qualify for overtime. I mean, that’s just crazy.

David Goldstein:

It is. It is crazy.

Marcus Baram:

And then it stated, 23,000 until 2019. Which again, anybody making 24,000, like the woman I profiled my first story in 2014 or 2015, she’s making 24,000 and raising a kid as a single mom. And she can’t qualify for overtime because she’s working 50, 55 hours a week. That’s just insane.

David Goldstein:

Yeah. Nick and I came at this topic through the policy wonk angle. Our first introduction to it was simply, oh, this is something that the White House can do without Congress, that it can be done through rulemaking. And we started looking at it and then we realized what a big issue it was. Our initial interest was simply, it was something that the president could do. What we didn’t do, and we researched it, we know all the numbers, we can see how big a problem this is. What we didn’t do, well, thankfully, I’m no longer a journalist. I didn’t actually have to go out and interview people. We don’t have that one-on-one experience with the people that this is impacting. You do. When you talk to these people, did they know how much they were being cheated?

Marcus Baram:

No. I mean, that’s part of the problem, which I think I talk about in one of the stories, is that there’s so little … I mean, it’s one of those situations which is very common, I think, with income inequality in general, is that the new reality is so different from the old reality that people … It’s like the frog boiling in the pot. They get used to this new miserable situation. They have no expectations of anything better. I think most people were like, oh, yeah. I mean, they had heard the idea, they knew vaguely about overtime. But they were like, yeah, I don’t get that.

I’ve never gotten that. I’ve never been told that I might qualify. It’s not even a consideration. I mean, I was like, oh, the pot at the end of the rainbow, yeah, whatever. That’s not my day to day reality. Which is really, really upsetting because it has that insidious effect of making people, not because they don’t expect it, they don’t demand it. And so you had people who were just like, ah, whatever, I worked 60 hours, I sucked last week, but that’s how it is.

David Goldstein:

But everybody does.

Marcus Baram:

Right. And so very few people are complaining.

David Goldstein:

Yeah, except for everyone else in every other developed country.

Marcus Baram:

Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, it’s very common. I mean, that, and also I think … I mean, overtime is interesting because it is something you do get across wage sectors. I’m doing some reporting on wage theft right now for ProPublica and there it’s a little bit different. Because you or I, if we got instead of $2,000 every two weeks, we got $1,985. We’d be in there with HR being like, what’s going on here? Look at my check. And instead, a lot of low wage workers, especially undocumented workers, don’t do that because they’re vulnerable. But with overtime, even that is everybody’s [inaudible 00:13:39]. I’ve worked 60 hours a week for some jobs and never even thought about overtime. I was just like, alright, this is the way it is. What can I do?

Nick Hanauer:

What did you learn when you talked to people who had been taken advantage of this policy failure? What surprised you in your discussions with them?

Marcus Baram:

I guess it was a little surprising. I mean, going back to that previous point, about how people just weren’t like that upset about it. There’s a certain cynicism that’s set in, especially I think among low wage workers who were just like, yeah, oh, really? Yeah, okay. Then when pigs fly like, that’s not really something I even thought about, it’s not going to happen. There’s a world weariness, which is sad. I feel like 100 years ago, there would have been people on the streets marching. Instead people are just like, eh, I need this job. I don’t want to upset my boss.

And that’s another thing which comes through, which I’ve done stories on union busting too, is that people are just … They are afraid of creating stress, like anything to give your boss a reason to say, “Yeah, you know what, you’re out of here. You’re bigger pain in the ass.” And that’s a new economy too, is that people are very vulnerable. Nobody has the confidence to complain. There’s a certain cynicism among the people. I mean, some, I think, were really educated and you’re like, wow, they were amazed to hear that they actually do qualify or they may qualify in some cases. And that was inspiring. But I think a lot of workers just didn’t expect it.

David Goldstein:

Or they would qualify if they hadn’t been misclassified, but I think the number you had in one of your pieces in California, they looked at it and 93% of employers had misclassified employees in the previous year.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah. It’s amazing. And it is ridiculous when you think about it. I have another example of a dollar general, which has basically two employees at all times and the so-called manager. Basically, he sweeps the floors, he stocks the shelves, he does everything, except very little management, but he’s considered a manager. He has an exemption from overtime, even though he’s doing everything in the store. Which, again, I think I tried to include more of.

There was some like a hearing in California in the state Senate that discussed this and some very aggressive, I think, government official was questioning some lawyer for industry. It was almost like surreal, the arguments back and forth. Because the guy was like, “Well, even though he’s not really actively managing, he’s thinking management, he’s planning management.” And the government guy was like, “Really, how do you assess that? How do you know what’s in his mind?” It was almost an existential level that he’s a manager because he is thinking about his management responsibilities. It was about a fast food restaurant managers.

Nick Hanauer:

According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 52% of full time workers report working more than 40 hours a week, 39% work at least 50 hours a week, and 18% work at least 60. It’s a big pervasive problem. It would be fun, actually, Goldie, to put a little poll up in the show notes and ask our listeners what proportion of them with full-time jobs work more than 40 hours a week. And I think that where the conversation around this usually goes is, obviously, income. But I think a bigger issue maybe just time.

I mean, the difference between working 40 hours a week and 60 hours a week yearly, really, is the difference between leading a good life and one that is besieged. Particularly, if you’re not making a million bucks a year, it’s one thing. If you’re making a shit ton of money working 60 hours a week is no problem because, of course, you have the resources to pay people to do all the stuff you don’t do in that extra 20 hours a week, whether it’s childcare or gardening or whatever it is. You can use money to make up the difference.

But for most people, certainly, somebody making $50,000 a year, $60,000 a year, who work 60 hours a week, not 40, that’s not enough money to pay to get done the stuff that life requires, much less, enjoy yourself or help your kids with homework, right?

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, for sure. It’s a quality of life issue.

Nick Hanauer:

I wonder if the pandemic hasn’t, to a certain extent, reminded people about how awesome it is to have a little bit of time back. And I wonder if that will play into how people feel about this issue right now.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah. I mean, that was a big issue. I think a lot of us talked about that during the pandemic, how nice it was to be at home or not to be commuting and to have that extra time. And then definitely, you saw more workers demanding more from their employers. There was more demand for higher wages, more time off, better treatment, better policies. And that definitely picked up because some companies did raise their wages. It remains to be seen.

I think whether that’s going to last, it feels like already wages have gone back down or the wage growth has … That was pretty dramatic for about a year-and-a-half has slowed. I wonder whether people can start feeling vulnerable enough to not have the power to demand more. That’s part of the issue, is worker power. That even if you don’t have a union, there used to be a little more sense of you have a stake in the discussion, you can demand more. And that disappears. Workers are so vulnerable, even if you’re an accountant or be a white collar worker.

David Goldstein:

A lot of this is we allowed the overtime threshold to erode so that many fewer people qualify. We allowed regulation to erode so that we basically accepted all of this job misclassification. Because let’s be clear, even if you are over the overtime threshold, if you’re not a manager, you still should get overtime. If you’re not actually in management, there are job classifications that don’t get overtime. The more pernicious thing to me is that erosion of norms and expectations that if you go back and you watch TV of the 1970s, TV and movies, there was this trope, this expectation.

People sometimes counted on overtime. They knew in the busy season, they were going to get overtime and they relied on that time-and-a-half pay. Some people looked forward to it because that’s what they would use to pay for the family vacation or to buy gifts at Christmas. It was part of the culture that time-and-a-half was a thing. You say time-and-a-half and we have written this. And when we’ve written about this, we’ve had to write it in multiple ways. If I write time-and-a-half, that doesn’t click in the mind of a 20 something or 30 something.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, they have no idea what you’re saying.

David Goldstein:

Whereas-

Marcus Baram:

Right. You’re right. They’re like, what is that? Some kind of time travel thing? What is that?

David Goldstein:

Yeah. Whereas time-and-a-half for … I’m 59. Time-and-a-half for somebody who grew up in the ’70s, you knew what time-and-a-half meant. It meant you got time-and-a-half pay. You didn’t have to say time-and-a-half pay. If I say time-and-a-half pay, that still might not click in a lot of people’s heads what I’m talking about.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, that’s true. No, definitely, definitely. People have gotten used to just this is how it is. And they’re working longer hours. And that was a standard. Like I said before, it’s had that insidious effect where it’s just become … It’s like the new normal. The new normal is you work more and you don’t expect more and you are at the whim of whatever your employer wants, whatever your boss wants. And I think part of that is tied into the worker, the gig economy.

But beyond that, even just the idea of not having that kind of relationship with your employer, where you’re there for a long time and they depend on you. We did a story a while ago about how the whole idea of stakeholder capitalism and how that’s become the new mantra instead of shareholder primacy, which obviously was dominant for decades. And you look back at some of the statements from the heads of US steel or GM in the 1930s and they talk, what they’re basically saying is stakeholder capitalism.

They talk about how that’s important to recognize their stakeholders are their employers, their customers, people in the community where they’re headquartered. The shareholders are just one piece of it. And all that shifted in the ’70s and ’80s, I think, largely due to a lot of Reagan era policies.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah. Marcus, what should we do? We’re highly engaged. The Civic Ventures team is highly engaged in driving policy. If it was up to you, what would you suggest the department of labor do?

Marcus Baram:

Probably, is follow the example of … I mean, like I mentioned in the last story, there are some states that do have higher thresholds and we’re more … They’ve expanded overtime protections, including California, Oregon, Washington, and Washington. Washington has a pretty impressive model, which they actually worked on very carefully. I mean, we didn’t get into full detail, but they really had a very democratic process where they had tons of sessions around the state. Because Washington is very varied from Seattle to the Eastern farm lands.

And they had these discussions with stakeholders, with employers, with union people, with farm workers. And they came up with this very high threshold. I think it’s going to hit 85,000 in a few years, but they’re phasing it in because it’s true. If all of a sudden, you made it 85,000 nationally, all these companies would be running ragged and they’d probably be firing people and doing all kinds of tricks to get around the overtime rules. You have to phase it in.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, but a huge phase in.

Marcus Baram:

And they did it. And I think, in Washington, they’re phasing it in over six or seven or eight years. I mean, it’s a very long phase in, but it’s very robust and it’s a common smart way of-

Nick Hanauer:

Did you know that we architected that? Probably not.

Marcus Baram:

I do, actually. Now that I … I do remember that, actually. You guys are geniuses. Thank you.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, we did that.

David Goldstein:

Yeah. And we tied it to the minimum wage.

Marcus Baram:

Right, right, which is also so smart.

David Goldstein:

Yeah. Which is, historically, the two of them came in together, was minimum wage and maximum hours. Because if you don’t have maximum hours, the minimum wage is meaningless. They’ll just pay you the minimum and then work you more hours.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah, yeah, certainly.

David Goldstein:

And there were these historic ratios of, yes, they were somewhat pulled out of thin air at the time in the 1930s, at the minimum wage was half the median and the overtime threshold is three times the minimum. But those were standards that were maintained for 30, 40 years before both the minimum wage and the overtime threshold were allowed to erode. And as we’ve learned in Washington State, it turns out when you raise standards, not only is it not a job killer, it turns out to be good for employment. We end up having a very robust economy and very robust job market.

Nick Hanauer:

Personally, did you stake out some ground on where you think the federal government should go? We have a very strong view, just wondering if you do.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah. I mean, I don’t have the specific policy prescription. But I mean, I definitely think the Washington state one is a good model and it’s going to be a little more difficult than a federal level to get that high a threshold. But I know that right now the Biden administration is working on this revamp, which is supposed to happen in October of overtime. And that might involve either taking it to the Obama level, which was 43,000, which is still low, to beyond that, which would be good. I think most people are pushing for something in the 50s.

I mean, I think some have also pushed for it that to align with the California rules, which are a little more, not quite as generous as the Washington state ones and have a lot of protections, including ones for farm workers who are always historically excluded from overtime.

Nick Hanauer:

We’re pushing them to go to 85.

Marcus Baram:

Oh, wow.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s the Washington state standard, basically. And at that level, the threshold would be effectively where it was at the former high watermark.

David Goldstein:

Same percentage. Well, actually, a little lower, but close to the same percentage of about 60% of salaried workers would qualify for overtime.

Nick Hanauer:

And then our discussions with the Department of Labor and with a senior administration officials, one of our core arguments is that if you don’t raise the threshold to include most people, you can’t reestablish the norm. It has to be a social and economic expectation, again, that if you’re doing what other people tell you to do, which is most people, then they should pay you for the extra hours that that workload requires. And if they don’t want to do that, then they should hire more workers.

Because I think that the other dirty secret of overtime is that a high standard is probably the biggest job creator as a policy that is available in the country. Because if you require businesses to pay people time-and-a-half, their best alternative, if they actually have the work to do is to hire new workers to take the pressure off the old workers. And if you’ve got 30 million, 40 million people working 60 hours or 40 hours of pay, and all of a sudden can’t do that anymore, you’ve effectively created 10 million new jobs.

Marcus Baram:

Right. And that was the original incentive of Roosevelt administration with the Fair Labor Standards Act, was to create … Overtime was meant to spur job creation.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. That’s right.

Marcus Baram:

I mean, it’s interesting because of the labor people have always been a little bit … They’ve changed over the years. But I remember there’s some quote from Samuel Gompers from 1910 or something, where he was wary of overtime. Because he thought it’ll become a new normal. And then it won’t spur a job creation and people will just be used to working that extra level of work, which is what happened. And most of them didn’t qualify for overtime. It was even worse than his worst nightmare. But that is a key thing.

I mean, you’re right to bring it back to … It’s been so slow and so eroded that it’s going to take some major change to even get back somewhat to close to the pace that it was at before or where the coverage that was there before. It’s, unfortunately, all these little changes barely make a difference. Obama’s change wouldn’t made much of a difference. I mean, if-

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, that’s right.

Marcus Baram:

And obviously, Trump barely was even worse.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. Our hope is that the Biden administration will do better. One final question, why do you do this work?

Marcus Baram:

Why do I do this work? Good question. I don’t know. I mean, part of it, actually, is … I mean, I do have … These were issues I care about and I think … I mean, number one is I feel like a lot of wage and hour issues and worker safety and health issues, especially among the working class and lower middle class, the people who make up to do the jobs that help the country run are ignored by the media and you barely see any coverage of it. I mean, even researching this overtime thing, you barely see any stories about it. There was a few stories when Obama made his proposal and then there’s nothing. I mean-

Nick Hanauer:

People just don’t get it, just like the workers.

Marcus Baram:

And it’s probably worse in the digital era where if one’s looking for clicks, and so even any kind of substantive or an analytical story has to be driven by some big controversy in the news cycle. I mean, it’s a whole media problem. And then I think, for me, it was also personal the income inequality. Because I was always amazed at how, when I started off in journalism of the Daily News in the late ’90s, I was making 40,000 a year, which was of like … I was the cub reporter just starting out, this is what you make.

And then almost like 17 years later, so in 2012, 2013, I was paying people. I was a managing editor of this online news publication. I was paying people. Our starting salaries for reporters was 30,000. Salaries dropped 25% over almost 20 years. Now, in what other occupation-

David Goldstein:

That’s not accounting for inflation. That’s not even accounting for inflation. That’s a 20%-

Marcus Baram:

No, it doesn’t even count for inflation –

David Goldstein:

 … drop in-

Marcus Baram:

Overall income.

David Goldstein:

Yeah.

Marcus Baram:

Yeah. I mean, I was like, what other profession does that? It’s insane. It was so just sad. My reporters were doubling up in apartments we had in Long Island just to pay the rent and afford to do this job. It brought it home. And then obviously, seeing people lose their jobs and people who are accountants, all of a sudden, working in a subway. It’s pretty obvious. And it just seemed like something that needs to be revealed and reported.

David Goldstein:

Yeah. I suspect, Marcus, that part of the reason why this doesn’t get attention or didn’t get attention is that journalists and progressive think tank workers, they all work long hours for low pay and no overtime. It just never occurs. And well, everybody does this. What are these people complaining? I’m working like this too. This is the norm. This is what you do to get ahead in America.

Marcus Baram:

It’s true. The reason, I think, to that, I think, sensibility among journalists and then also … I mean, to shine more of a harsh light on the media, I think the reporters have lost touch in many ways with the working class. You don’t see stories about that. They’re relegated to oddball little publications with small circulations or little quirky websites. And the main publications don’t cover these issues because they’re caught up in other big stories. The business section is full of sexy stories about tech, and nothing about the … Look at the number of labor reporters who’ve been laid off. All those labor reporters … Every paper used to have a labor reporter. There’s not-

David Goldstein:

Not anymore.

Marcus Baram:

A few. And none of them not at all.

David Goldstein:

Yeah, yeah. Lots and lots of business reporters, very few labor reporters. We only get one side of the story. And the side of the story you hear is, oh no, we can’t afford to … If you pass this rule and you raise the overtime threshold, we’re going to have to lay people off.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does.

Marcus Baram:

Right, right, exactly. Which doesn’t really happen.

Nick Hanauer:

Alright. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing the work and being with us on the podcast. Really fantastic.

David Goldstein:

Fantastic.

Marcus Baram:

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

David Goldstein:

I think, Nick, we’ve covered this topic before. I think it’s interesting, Marcus talking to workers who were impacted. How few of them actually knew that this was their right? Not only to get that time-and-a-half, which as we mentioned, a lot of people don’t know what time-and-a-half means anymore, but that they should get paid at all. Because in America, you work hard to get ahead. That’s just what’s expected of you. And if you don’t put in that extra work, well, I guess you’re just not dedicated to your job, you’re not meant for success.

My big takeaway, and this is something we’ve learned over the years, as we said, we originally approached this from a policy perspective, is how much the erosion of the policies have eroded norms and expectations that it used to be in America, that word free time, when you had free time. Free time was something that you had to spend with your family, with your kids, and with your friends to go on vacation, to pursue hobbies, to do things that interested you outside of the workplace. That’s what free time was. That’s what it meant. And now, free time is something that your employer expects from you. They want your time for free. And we just shrug our shoulders and say, oh, I guess that’s just the way it is.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, yeah. And again, I mean, that’s so much a part of why we hope that the Biden administration will raise the threshold above towards 60%. Because if you can reestablish the norm, you can change the culture. And I think that would be good for everybody. Again, I want to underscore that this issue goes deeper than just trying to increase the wages for middle class people for me. Our country, as we’ve said many times before, is flying apart.

And it is flying apart because the objective fact that for most people, certainly, the bottom 90% of earners, things have gotten harder and shittier every year since the ’70s has shredded the reciprocity norms that make social cohesion and democracy possible. And when I think about these policies, like the overtime threshold, we’re trying to go beyond the economic inconvenience of getting screwed by your employer. We’re trying to rebuild the society and the culture by proving to people that the government that they elected is moderately on their side and the democracy that they participate in is worth defending and supporting.

But there’s no way to get them to do that if every year their lived experience is, no, I just got screwed again. And so that’s why this is so important, is that the only way the country will be better is if people feel better. And the only way they’re going to feel better is if they do better. And the only way people actually do better is if they’re fucking paid more. That’s it. But also not overworked. I mean, let’s be clear. A lot of people would make the choice. Some people would choose to work the extra hours and get that time-and-a-half.

David Goldstein:

Yeah, that’s right.

Nick Hanauer:

And some people would choose not to work the extra hours and spend time with their children. And that’s awesome. And the thing is that, we’re in the country at this point in an existential fight over the future. And the best way to secure the future is to make sure that most people feel like things are going well. And here’s an opportunity to do that, and we should take it. And just to remind listeners, the Biden administration through the department of labor is in the process of updating the overtime threshold. We’ve been involved in lots of meetings.

I’ve personally met with senior folks in the administration over it. We’ve lobbied senators and folks in Congress to push. And they are indeed going to do something. The question is, how far will they go? But I think that listeners can expect in the next month or two to hear something about overtime and hopefully, we’ll be celebrating, not crying.

David Goldstein:

Right. And let’s be clear why this is important, is that this is something the president can actually do. This is something that the Department of Labor is legally authorized to do through the rulemaking process. It’s very different than the minimum wage. President Biden can talk about how he supports the $15 minimum wage. But if the Democrats don’t have the vote in Congress, if mansion and cinema won’t vote to override the filibuster so that we can get this through the Senate, then it can’t be done.

The president can’t do anything about it because we don’t have enough votes in the Senate to do it. We have enough in the House at the moment, not enough in the Senate. But the overtime rule, that can be done without Congress. And that’s why we’re counting on the Biden administration to go bold on this one and lead through action, not just through words.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. And on the next episode of Pitchfork Economics, we will be covering the lingering effects that long COVID has had on the economy and the labor market.

Speaker 4:

Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on medium at Civic Skunk Works and peak behind the podcast scenes on Instagram at Pitchfork Economics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.