Chain Restaurant Group Calls New Overtime Regs "Outrageous"

As a result of the Labor Department’s new overtime rules, management positions in restaurants will disappear, limiting career advancement and hurting restaurant employees and owners, according to the National Council of Chain Restaurants.

The organization is a division of the National Retail Federation. The new overtime standards, which were updated for the first time in more than 25 years, will result in many salaried employees that were exempt from overtime becoming eligible for overtime starting this fall.

“By dramatically increasing the wage threshold for determining a restaurant manager’s overtime eligibility, key management positions will be eliminated, restaurant employee career advancement will be derailed and workplace morale will plummet,” the group’s executive director, Rob Green, said in a statement.

“Overtime regulations need to reflect cost-of-living differences around the country and allow employees and managers to grow in their careers,” he added. “If this outrageous regulation remains unchanged, chain restaurants will be forced to convert tens of thousands of managers from being salaried professionals to hourly status in order to avoid costly and unpredictable impacts. Restaurant owners across the country are asking why the federal government wants to take a salary away from restaurant managers.”

The National Retail Federation said the ruling is political.

“These rules are a career killer. With the stroke of a pen, the Labor Department is demoting millions of workers,” said David French, the NRF’s Senior Vice President for Government Relations.

. In the retail sector alone, hundreds of thousands of career professionals will lose their status as salaried employees and find themselves reclassified as hourly workers, depriving them of the workplace flexibility and other benefits they so highly-value. And the one-size-fits-all approach means businesses trying to make ends meet in small towns across America are now expected to pay the same salaries as those in New York City.”

“In the real world – as opposed to D.C. conference rooms filled with career bureaucrats and political appointees – employers and employees will suffer the consequences of a policy rooted in pure politics.”

“These regulations are full of false promises. Most of the people impacted by this change will not see any additional pay. Instead, this sudden and extraordinary increase will mean more red tape and fewer advancement opportunities for salaried professionals. In the real world – as opposed to D.C. conference rooms filled with career bureaucrats and political appointees – employers and employees will suffer the consequences of a policy rooted in pure politics.