New overtime guidelines for American workers were issued and approved on April 20 by the federal government – and the final rules probably aren’t quite as bad as Democrats and organized labor expected them to be.

Intense lobbying by organized labor and about 80,000 public comments on the matter from people concerned about losing their overtime caught the Bush Administration’s attention during this election year.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has been closely involved as the rulemaking process has evolved, said: “We have a regulation that has gone from profoundly terrible to just plain terrible.”

The Bush Administration has been the primary mover in making changes to federal overtime rules, many of which date to the 1930s. Bush has claimed that he wants to clarify rules in order to limit litigation. Democrats claim he wants to save employers money at the expense of workers.

The rules the Bush Administration initially proposed were much worse than the final product.

“The new rules were so watered down compared to last year’s Bush Administration draft proposal that there might not be enough outrage left to sustain the drive” to overturn the new policies, the Wall Street Journal reported.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said “The Bush Administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers and instead pressed forward with eliminating overtime pay for a huge swath of middle-class workers.”

The swath of middle class workers who could lose overtime is less now than it would have been under the first proposal by Bush. Under the new overtime rules, which can go into effect in August, workers who make less than $23,660 per year are automatically eligible for overtime pay. Previously, that income level was set at $8,060. That’s the good news.

But the administration’s new rules also will make it easier to deny overtime to certain workers who earn more than $100,000 per year. Originally, the Bush Administration wanted to set that threshold at $65,000 per year, but backed off after the public comments.

Some classifications of workers who earn more than $23,660 per year can now be re-classified at an employer’s discretion as working in a “supervisory” or “administrative” role, and thus be forced to take compensatory time off (at a time of the employer’s choice) in lieu of overtime pay.

What workers will be affected? Mostly white collar workers. Language in the initial rules originally seemed to target workers like police officers, firefighters, paramedics as well as nurses. Now the Department of Labor said the new rules specifically ensure that first responders to emergencies are eligible for overtime.

Beyond that, the new rules create a mish-mash of worker classifications that lay out who is eligible and non-eligible for overtime. Insurance claims adjusters and funeral home directors, for example, are not eligible for overtime.

Most blue-collar workers and those in the construction industry are apparently not affected by the new rules. But the rules introduce a fuzzy area that could be open to interpretation. Workers who are “supervisors,” “administrators” and “professionals” are not eligible for overtime. Initially there was concern in construction that a foreman or a journeyman who supervises an apprentice could be stripped of overtime protections – but those concerns seem to have passed under the new language.

Unionized workers are not affected by the new Labor Department language, but time will tell if this will open employer proposals for comp time instead of overtime during the bargaining process.

In the general industry, who gets exemptions from overtime remains a matter for concern for a lot of workers. “One of the big wild cards in the new rules changes the terms of some of the exemptions, so that a lot of workers could still fall into them,” and lose access to overtime, the Wall Street Journal said of the “mammoth new rules.”

Last year, Republicans in the Senate and House backed an amendment by Sen. Harkin to block the part of Bush’s plan that takes away overtime pay from workers but would allow any expansion of overtime eligibility to workers not currently qualified. Republican congressional leaders, working closely with the Bush White House, stripped the Harkin amendment from the final version of appropriations bill to which it was attached.

Harkin and Democratic senators have fought to win a new vote on a similar amendment this year, but Senate Republican leaders also blocked those attempts, even pulling bills off the floor and delaying votes to prevent a vote on the Harkin amendment.

The Journal said earlier this month, “The Bush Administration is taking a substantial political risk in attempting to re-engineer the complex overtime rules…. The paper added, “A legislative defeat on the issue – or even a protracted battle – could do election-year damage to President Bush.”