We need to fix overtime pay in America (with Marcus Baram)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you're a salaried worker, chances are you're no longer eligible for the overtime pay that you would have received 40 years ago. A robust federal overtime standard used to serve as a kind of minimum wage for the middle class, providing both a valuable source of extra income and a shield of protection for the 40-hour workweek. When he interviewed workers around the country, Journalist Marcus Baram learned firsthand why we must raise the overtime threshold and restore overtime protections for American workers. Marcus Baram is a journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The WSJ, Capital & Main, and more Twitter: @mbaram (Full disclosure: Civic Ventures is a partial funder of Capital & Main's inequality reporting project.) Who Killed Overtime Pay? https://capitalandmain.com/latest-news/the-50-100-pay-gap/who-killed-overtime-pay-the-50-100-pay-gap America Gave Up on Overtime https://time.com/6168310/overtime-pay-history Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	I fear that our listeners must be hiring of us whining about the overtime threshold,
0:07.6	but given that it is the single most important intervention in economic policy, we are not
0:13.7	going to let it go, we've called the overtime threshold the minimum wage for the middle
0:18.5	class.
0:19.5	Half of the American workers work more than 40 hours a week, 20% work more than 50 hours
0:24.3	a week, all these workers are missing out on time and a half.
0:33.0	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics,
0:38.0	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
0:49.0	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:52.2	I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:00.6	One of the things you and I have in common, Nick, is that when we get our teeth into a subject,
1:05.7	we don't like to let go of it, do we?
1:07.8	No, we do not.
1:08.8	No, we do not.
1:09.8	And I fear that our listeners must be hiring of us whining about the overtime threshold,
1:16.4	but given that it is probably the single most important or potentially important intervention
1:22.5	in economic policy that could materially impact middle class people, we are not going
1:28.5	to let it go until the Biden administration does the right thing.
1:33.1	And a lot of people might be surprised by that assertion of yours or think that it's
1:39.4	a little hyperbolic to say that it's one of the single most important policies.
1:44.3	But as we've talked about before and we'll talk about again on this episode, but we've
1:51.2	called this the overtime threshold the minimum wage for the middle class.
	...

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