National Retail Federation - The Overtime Rule Stops a Kid Like Me

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By J. Craig Sherman

If the Department of Labor's new rules expanding overtime had been in place when Tim Scott was working in a men's clothing store 35 years ago, the Republican U.S. senator from South Carolina says he might never have made it to where he is today.

"The overtime rule stops a kid like me from experiencing the first level of being a supervisor," Scott said. "It slows down the ability of kids trapped in poverty looking for a way out."

Scott was named as one of NRF's two Legislators of the Year at the annual Retail Advocates Summit last week in Washington, along with Representative Peter Welch, D-Vt. A former small business owner who has worked on education and labor issues, he is the lead Senate sponsor of legislation that would require DOL to do further analysis of the overtime regulations before they can take effect.

Scott was seven years old when his parents divorced and he, his mother and two brothers moved into his grandparents' home, where they shared a single bedroom. His mother, a nurse's aide, worked 16 hours a day to support the family.

As a teenager, in 1981 Scott was working for $2.85 an hour at a movie theater in a Charleston-area mall when a men's clothing store offered him a job for $4.35. He eventually became a supervisor, then an assistant manager and manager. Along the way, he went from being an hourly worker to salaried -- an important distinction in a seasonal business where hourly work meant good money when the store was busy but a smaller paycheck when sales were slow.

"This notion of a salary gave me certainty in the ability to help my mother pay the bills," Scott said. "Retail was the way I started to find out how to escape poverty through hard work."

Scott's position as a full-time, salaried store manager led to being recruited into the insurance business, which in turn led to ownership of his own insurance agency and a real estate business before he entered politics.

"The reason I reject the flawed concept that we can help people with this overtime increase is because I've worked in the real world," Scott said. "I've been the employee working my way up and I've been the employer making decisions on who gets promoted."

Under the overtime rules, most workers making up to $47,476 a year will be eligible for overtime starting in December if the regulations are not blocked by Scott's legislation. That's double the current level, and would include most retail managers and assistant managers -- a move NRF research shows would limit opportunities for career advancement like those that helped Scott.

When federal agencies like DOL issue rules increasing the number of workers who must be paid overtime or other federal mandates that impact employment, Scott said, it shows that those in Washington "don't understand and appreciate the actual impacts of rules on real people, people living from paycheck to paycheck."

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