Mario Gonzalez/The Rider Graphic
UTRGV is evaluating a federal judge’s nationwide preliminary injunction on the final rule on overtime, university officials say.
“We are still evaluating. I have not got any official feedback yet on what we are going to be doing in regards to the changes,” said Kristina Chavez, compensation manager for UTRGV Human Resources. “It is temporary. I mean, it is at this point delayed, but there is no final word in regards to what is going to happen.”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, from the Eastern District of Texas Sherman Division, issued a memorandum opinion and order granting a preliminary injunction in the State of Nevada, et al, vs. the U.S. Labor Department, et al.
According to the order, “the court determines that the state plaintiffs have satisfied all of the elements required for the issuance of a preliminary injunction:”
–a substantial likelihood of success on the merits
–a substantial threat that plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted
–that the threatened injury outweighs any damage that the injunction might cause the defendant
–that the injunction will not disserve the public interest
Nevada and 20 other states, including Texas, filed suit against the U.S. Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, challenging the final rule on overtime.
The state plaintiffs argue the Federal Labor Standards Act’s overtime requirements violate the Constitution by regulating the states and coercing them to adopt wage policy choices that adversely affect the states’ priorities, budgets and services, according to the memorandum opinion and order.
If implemented, the overtime rule would convert 450 exempt UTRGV employees to nonexempt.
However, the rule would not impact 25 UTRGV job titles under the academic support personnel exemption, which was scheduled to take effect Thursday throughout the United States, university officials say.
As previously reported by The Rider, the overtime rule stands to have a bigger impact on exempt employees who would be reclassified as nonexempt because it would change the way they have to account for their time at work.
“There is a specific [exemption] that the Labor Department actually included for teaching titles or titles that are closely related to student advising or student advisers, specifically,” Chavez said. “Twenty-five [UTRGV] titles are being identified as academic support personnel.”
The U.S. Labor Department states that “the administrative personnel that help run higher education institutions and interact with students outside the classroom, such as department heads, academic counselors and advisers, intervention specialists and others with similar responsibilities are subject to a special salary threshold that does not apply to white-collar employees outside of higher education.”
If the rule is implemented, 107 UTRGV employees would not have an exemption status change.
These employees are not entitled to overtime compensation if they are paid at least as much as the entrance salary for teachers at their institution, according to the U.S. Labor Department website.
“We will be adjusting some of [the salaries] because they still have to meet the minimum teaching salary for the institution and that one was set at $39,036,” Chavez said.
She said that UTRGV would not convert anybody from nonexempt to exempt.
In an interview Oct. 25, Michael James, UTRGV chief Human Resources officer, said the threshold for a nonexempt position was being raised from $23,600 to $47,476 and jobs that are lower than that exemption threshold will have to be nonexempt.
Every year that the threshold remains unchanged, it covers fewer workers.
According to the overtime rule, the Labor Department will address this by updating the salary threshold every three years, beginning Jan. 1, 2020. Each update will raise the standard threshold to 40 percent, estimated to be $51,168 in 2020.
–Jesus Sanchez contributed to this report.
