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Tuesday, January 06, 2004

How to screw your workers...
A helpful service of the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.

The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.

Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.


Left I comments:

CNN's Aaron Brown, who tipped me to this item in his "Tomorrow's Headlines Tonight" segment, commented that he was perplexed because he thought the "Labor" Department was actually supposed to be working on behalf of labor, i.e., workers.

Aaron apparently doesn't know that the Bush administration has secretly changed the names of several departments. The new names are:

The Department of Cheap Labor
The Department of Empire (previously Defense)
The Department of Raiding the Treasury
The Department of Destroying Education
The Environmental Destruction Agency
The Department of Wasting Energy to Benefit Campaign Contributors
The Department of Genetically-Modified Agribusiness
The Department of Colored Alerts, aka Homeland Senility, aka Gestapo