FAYETTEVILLE -- Hundreds of workers at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will be newly eligible for overtime compensation under a U.S. Department of Labor rule set to take effect Dec. 1. At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the rule changes the status of about 1,000 employees.
Affected workers include dozens of postdoctoral researchers, also known as junior scientists, who at UAMS will have salaries increased to remain exempt from overtime as they work long hours pursuing scientific discovery. UA-Fayetteville, another research-heavy institution, has yet to decide on individual positions.
"It's pretty huge for me personally. My wife and I are talking about starting a family," said Ray Fisher, a UA System Division of Agriculture postdoctoral researcher seeing a salary increase to about $47,500 annually from approximately $40,000.
But despite some decisions made already, details of how university budgets will be affected -- as well as the future of the rule itself -- remain uncertain.
"At this time, we do not have a formal estimate as to the total cost of implementing the new rules," UA-Fayetteville spokesman Mark Rushing said in an email.
The rule's final version, announced in May, updates overtime regulations that apply to "white collar" executive, administrative and professional workers, with an estimated 4 million employees nationally expected to receive overtime pay protections in the first year of implementation, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Under the rule's 2004 update, salaried "white collar" workers earning more than $455 weekly and working more than 40 hours in a week would not be eligible for overtime pay, which is not less than 1½ the regular pay rate.
The newly revised rule raises the weekly overtime threshold to $913 from $455, starting Dec. 1.
As an annual salary, the threshold increased to $47,476 from $23,660. The new threshold is set at the 40th percentile of full-time salaried workers' weekly earnings in the lowest-paid area of the country, the South Census Region.
That means that 40 percent of full-time salaried workers in the South earn at or below $913 a week.
Under the rule, employers must either raise the affected workers' salaries to above $913 weekly or provide for overtime compensation.
A pending lawsuit seeks to halt the rule, however. In September, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge joined a coalition of 21 states challenging the U.S. Department of Labor.
"Business owners, sheriffs, mayors and county judges are all concerned about how they are going to implement this rule without being forced to layoff hardworking employees," Rutledge said in a statement on the day of the filing.
A separate legal challenge has also been mounted by business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The rule, before it was made final, also drew opposition from some in higher education, though the numbers show cost increases from the rule make up a relatively small percentage of higher education spending, at least at UAMS.
With approximately 10,500 workers, UAMS describes itself as the state's largest public employer. Operations include a medical center.
UAMS pays out $965.4 million annually in compensation and benefits, according to its budget.
Leslie Taylor, vice chancellor for communications and marketing at UAMS, said the 1,000 affected employees are estimated to accrue about $1.5 million in annual overtime. But the overtime will be tracked over the next several weeks, and, at the end of January, UAMS "will make decisions as to where salary adjustments are needed and also as to where overtime hours can be better controlled," she said.
The rule may not survive for long given the election of Donald Trump, a Republican, to the presidency, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, said in an email.
"I expect Republicans in Congress to try to repeal the new rules, and the Trump administration will support them," said Eisenbrey, whose organization supported the rule change.
In August, the website Circa reported that Trump spoke about "rolling back the overtime regulation," delaying it or carving out an exemption for small businesses.
Approximately 625 UA-Fayetteville workers would see their status change under the rule, Rushing said, with the "vast majority" to become eligible for overtime rather than have salaries raised to above the new threshold.
The rule does not apply to students or workers whose main job is teaching. The university's total payroll includes 3,227 full- and part-time staff members, plus 1,419 faculty members.
UA-Fayetteville, as well as UAMS and Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, expect to make use of a provision that allows public entities to offer compensatory time off instead of overtime pay, school spokesmen said.
UA-Fayetteville plans to offer a mix of overtime pay and time off based on budgetary concerns and other factors, Rushing said. UAMS will also be doing both "based on operational need," Taylor said.
ASU at Jonesboro is "approaching any overtime earned as compensatory time," spokesman Bill Smith said in an email, with an estimated 850 out of the school's approximately 1,600 full-time employees to be affected by the new regulations.
Compensatory time in lieu of overtime pay is in effect for the entire ASU System, which includes the Jonesboro campus and four two-year institutions, said Jeff Hankins, an ASU System spokesman. The operating procedure took effect Nov. 1.
A few of the affected UA-Fayetteville employees may see raises and remain exempt from overtime, Rushing said.
"We hope to be in position to notify the impacted departments and staff of salary increases sometime next week," Rushing said in an email.
UA-Fayetteville employs 35 postdoctoral researchers, with 26 currently earning under the $47,476 threshold, Rushing said.
Among similar schools in nearby states, neither Louisiana State University nor the University of Oklahoma are enacting across-the-board raises for postdoctoral researchers, spokesmen for the schools said.
But the University of Kansas, the University of Texas, the University of Mississippi and the University of Missouri all have decided to raise postdoctoral researcher salaries to keep them exempt from overtime, spokesmen said.
As of June, UAMS employed 78 full-time postdoctoral fellows who, on average, earned $41,370, according to a Democrat-Gazette analysis of information provided by UAMS.
Their job duties require working more than an 40 hours per week, said Taylor, explaining why as a group their salaries will be raised to keep them exempt.
The UA Division of Agriculture employs 37 postdoctoral researchers, and 32 have been paid below the new $47,476 overtime threshold. But all of the "postdocs" will see their salaries increased so that the positions remain exempt from overtime, Barbara Batiste, the Division of Agriculture's Research and Extension compliance officer, wrote in an email.
Out of 1,187 UA Division of Agriculture employees, not including temporary workers, about 188 are seeing their status change, Batiste said, with their hours to be tracked and the workers eligible for overtime compensation.
Fisher, 35, earned a doctorate in entomology from UA-Fayetteville. He's helping lead a National Science Foundation-funded effort to study the evolution of mites, tiny creatures that can be barely visible to the human eye.
"I have never worked less than 40 hours a week. I've only worked more," Fisher said, estimating that he works on average between 55 and 70 hours weekly, not including weeks spent traveling to sometimes distant sites for research.
He said he's passionate about his work and grateful for his position.
"I'm actually getting paid money to do the thing I wanted to do at five years old, flipping rocks," he said.
But to reach his career goal of becoming a professor, Fisher said he's also working long hours to prove himself in a highly-competitive field.
"Having pay increases earlier on gives us an actual life," Fisher said.
A Section on 11/18/2016