Undertaking 2025 plans to show the 40-hour workweek right into a 160-hour work month so employers can keep away from paying extra time by reducing an worker’s hours later within the month in the event that they labored further hours close to the beginning of the month.
Undertaking 2025 did certainly name for Congress to permit employers and workers to undertake its proposed mannequin for an elevated extra time interval, which might certainly make it potential for employers to pay much less extra time to workers …
… but it surely didn’t explicitly state that each firm ought to adjust to this mannequin. Additional, it additionally instructed one other mannequin of 80 working hours throughout two weeks, not simply 160 hours throughout 4 weeks.
In September 2024, lower than two months earlier than the U.S. presidential election, allegations continued to unfold that Project 2025 — a conservative coalition’s plan for a future Republican administration — sought to place limits on employers having to pay workers extra time by calling for a change in the way in which work hours are counted. The marketing campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris shared the declare (archived) on Sept. 24:
The put up had gained 1 million views and 25,000 likes as of this writing. It featured a video of Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan who was operating for reelection. Within the video, Dingell stated:
Buried in Undertaking 2025 is a not-so-secret plan to eradicate extra time pay. It’s a beneficiant reward to companies and an insult to the American employee. Many American households, particularly in my state of Michigan, however in lots of others throughout the heartland of America and the remainder of the nation, depend on extra time to make ends meet and to save lots of for his or her future. In reality, we all know that many employees tackle jobs particularly as a result of employers provide over time.
However underneath [former President Donald] Trump’s Undertaking 2025, employers might drive employees to work greater than 40 hours every week with out paying them time and a half. In different phrases, you’re employed more durable, and also you earn much less. Staff deserve higher.
This rumor had begun to flow into the earlier month, most notably with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (archived):
The X put up, which had amassed greater than 1.5 million views as of this writing, learn: “Undertaking 2025 would change the 40hr workweek to a 160hr work-month, so your boss might make you’re employed further hours with no extra time pay by reducing your hours later within the month.”
Comparable claims additionally appeared on TikTok, garnering greater than 205,000 views (archived), and Threads.
All three posts referred to Web page 592 of the Undertaking 2025 “playbook,” titled: “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.”
The third bullet level on Web page 592 did certainly talk about extending the extra time interval “over an extended variety of weeks.” It learn:
Congress ought to present flexibility to employers and workers to calculate the extra time interval over an extended variety of weeks.
Particularly, employers and workers ought to be capable to set a two- or four-week interval over which to calculate extra time. This is able to give employees higher flexibility to work extra hours in a single week and fewer hours within the subsequent and wouldn’t require the employer to pay them extra for that very same whole variety of hours of labor throughout all the interval.
However, the Undertaking 2025 playbook didn’t explicitly state a 160-hour work-month must be imposed on employers and workers. Quite, it stated Congress ought to give firms and their staffs the flexibleness — i.e., the choice — to undertake such a mannequin.
The playbook additionally advisable “two- or four-week” intervals over which to calculate extra time, not only a 160-hour work-month.
Nonetheless, given the crux of the declare was correct, we rated it “Principally True.”
How Is Extra time Presently Calculated?
As of this writing, the extra time interval relies on a 40-hour workweek, per the 1938 Honest Labor Requirements Act. In response to the U.S. Department of Labor:
Lined nonexempt workers should obtain extra time pay for hours labored over 40 per workweek (any mounted and usually recurring interval of 168 hours – seven consecutive 24-hour intervals) at a price not lower than one and one-half occasions the common price of pay. There isn’t any restrict on the variety of hours workers 16 years or older may fit in any workweek. The FLSA doesn’t require extra time pay for work on weekends, holidays, or common days of relaxation, until extra time is labored on such days.
In different phrases, extra time is presently calculated as any time labored in extra of 40 hours in a 168-hour interval (seven full consecutive days). It must be paid not less than 1.5 occasions the traditional hourly price. For instance, if an worker who’s topic to extra time receives $8 per hour inside their regular 40 hours, then they need to be paid not less than $12 per hour (1.5 occasions $8) from their forty first hour of labor that week.
What Is Undertaking 2025’s Proposal for Extra time Intervals?
Undertaking 2025 proposed that firms and their workers must be free to calculate working hours throughout both 14 days (336 hours) or 28 days (672 hours), quite than simply seven days (168 hours). With out growing work hours total, this implies there can be both 80 working hours over 14 days or 160 working hours over 28 days.
Due to this fact, in an 80-hour setting, if an worker labored 45 hours one week and 35 hours the following, they might not be paid extra time for the additional 5 hours labored the primary week, as a result of the whole over two weeks would quantity to 80 hours.
The argument was this may not price the corporate more cash and the worker would profit from versatile hours over the 2 or 4 weeks. Nonetheless, extra time would begin to apply from the 81st hour labored over the 2 weeks.
This mannequin might additionally apply to 160 working hours over 4 weeks. For instance, an worker may work 80 hours the primary week, zero hours the second, one other 80 hours the third and 0 the fourth, and never obtain any extra time, regardless of working for 80 hours within the first and third weeks. The schedules may see bigger variations from week to week, however as long as the labored hours add as much as 160 a month, employees wouldn’t obtain extra time. It could solely kick in from the 161st hour labored over 4 weeks.
Snopes has reported on Project 2025 extensively. In July 2024, we revealed an overview of the conservative blueprint. We wrote about its views on U.S. families and checked out its plan for a military entrance exam for all U.S. highschool college students. Lastly, we additionally examined its plan to kill the U.S. Department of Education.
