First few Article Sentences
On June 30, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (“FLSA”) white-collar exemption rule, which would raise the salary threshold for exempt employees from $23,660 or $455 per week, to $50,440 annually or $970 per week. The proposed change also includes automatic period increases to the salary threshold. Statistics show that, if adopted, these changes will affect approximately 4.6 million employees that are currently classified as salary-exempt, including a large number of employees in the health care industry.
The comment period for the proposed changes ended on September 4, 2015. It was initially expected that the final regulation would be announced in early 2016—however, given the voluminous number of comments received, the DOL does not anticipate issuing a final rule until July 2016. Once issued, the changes will be effective within 60 to 120 days. Health care management should thus start looking internally at their operations in order to begin to understand the potential implications of the proposed rule changes.