Support Revision to Washington State Wage/Overtime Rules!

Sign here to support updated Wage/Overtime Rules!

Frozen Wage Standards Finally Being Updated

The State of Washington is moving to implement a long-overdue update to wage and overtime rules by increasing the wage threshold for salaried employees. If finalized, these rules could provide for needed wage increases for 400,000 Washington employees, whose work under outdated rules has significantly fallen behind costs of living (especially in places like Seattle). The wage eligibility threshold for many salaried employees would gradually increase to 2.5 times the minimum wage (from $49,140 in 2020 to $80,000 by 2026). Employers will either pay above this threshold or pay time and a half for hours worked over 40 per week.

We can help! Take a minute to sign our petition to Washington State Labor and Industries, urging them to improve wages and improve science by adopting the rule.

Background

In 2016, a similar effort to raise the wage threshold for salaried workers was initiated by President Obama’s administration and adopted after strong advocacy by UAW and other higher education stakeholders. A district court judge later overturned the rule, but the National Institutes of Health had implemented a new wage scale that exceeded the new standard, and UAW Local 5810 (Postdocs at the University of California) had already locked in the increased wage in their collective bargaining agreement. Several Universities then followed suit by incorporating the new wage standards for Postdocs, including the University of Washington.

Washington State voters increased the state minimum wage in 2016, prompting Governor Jay Inslee’s office to initiate a process for updating the wage standards that had not been revised for more than 40 years. Under current rules employees can be declared “exempt” from overtime if they make only $23,660 per year. As a result, fewer than 7% of all salaried workers are eligible for overtime today (as opposed to over 60% in the 1970s).

Support for the revised rules has been widespread.

Log Hours or Higher Wages?

If the updated standards are adopted, employers could either ask employees to carefully track all hours worked and submit them for 1.5x wages, or (more likely) can increase their employees’ pay above the new threshold. For higher education employees working in research, where the nature of the work makes hours tracking quite complex, a wage increase is more likely.