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07/02/2015

Obama's new proposal could introduce American journalists to overtime pay

From The Huffington Post

When reporters covered President Barack Obama’s proposal Monday night to extend overtime pay to millions of additional Americans, some, still on the clock past dinnertime, may have wondered whether they’d make the cut.

Under the proposal, salaried workers earning under $50,440 would automatically qualify for overtime pay after working 40 hours in a week. That’s a significant jump from the current threshold of $23,660, and it would vastly increase the number of salaried workers eligible for overtime, which pays at one-and-a-half times the normal pay rate.

Obama has specifically pointed to retail store managers as the sort of overworked employees who would benefit from the change. But the reform would be broad enough to also affect the many reporters, editors and producers who routinely work long and unpredictable hours for relatively modest pay. While many media companies haven't had to think at all about paying workers overtime, that could be about to change.

 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters and correspondents earned a median salary of $36,000 last year, with workers in the bottom quartile earning a median of just $26,910 -- far below the threshold proposed by the White House. The median salary for an editor -- a classification that covers the whole publishing industry -- was $54,890, about $4,000 above the planned threshold, with the bottom quartile down at $39,130.

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