"It's really in that duties test that the really negative impact is being made," said Baldwin Robertson, a lawyer who works with the AFL-CIO. Robertson helped launch an overtime question-and-answer site called "Ask a Lawyer" at www.workingamerica.org.
For example, Robertson said, workers in the food industry who spend most of their time doing manual work, but sometimes instruct subordinates, could be overtime losers under the new duties test. Those workers can be reclassified as team leaders or as executives because they lead teams, or supervise two or more people, Robertson said.
Business groups have been proponents of the new regulations.
"These reforms provide clearer guidance to both employers and workers on their rights and responsibilities under wage and labor laws," Randel K. Johnson, U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, said in a statement when the final rules were announced. "They also address many of the fundamental problems in the previous, outdated regulations that led to numerous compliance questions and needless lawsuits."
"We figure if they can find a way to take our overtime away from us, they will," said John Garrity, a naval electronics technician. Garrity, who earns about $5,000 in overtime a year that he uses to help support his wife and three children, believes the new rules would allow his employer to count him as a professional.
He testified in support of greater overtime protection before the Democratic Policy Committee after the first proposal in 2003 was released, although his employer has not told him he will lose his overtime.
Robertson and other labor organizations say registered nurses are in danger of losing their overtime because unclear language could reclassify hourly workers as salaried.
Terry Christle, a registered nurse at a hospital in Minneapolis, receives overtime, and might be one of those workers.
"I've read so many different variations that I'm not sure exactly how it'll impact me," Christle said. "But in general, I disagree with it."
Several groups have produced studies and reports pointing out what they say are loopholes in the rules through which many white-collar workers -- six million, according to Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute -- could lose overtime.
But the Department of Labor disputes that analysis and says it changed the rules because they desperately needed updating. The old rules did not mesh with the new economy, causing increased litigation, officials argued. Overtime class-action suits have doubled since 1997 and outnumber discrimination suits for the first time. Labor recovered $212 million in back wages in fiscal 2003.
