News

White Castle VP concerned over proposed overtime changes

June 11, 2015

White Castle Vice President Jamie Richardson testified in a hearing by the House Education and Workforce Committee's Subcommittee of Workforce Protection about his concern over impending overtime changes, according to a National Retail Federation press release. Richardson told a congressional panel that the Fair Labor Standards Act needed updating to reflect the current workforce and economy, the release said.

"While few significant modifications have been made to the FLSA in recent years, there has been a major shift in the industries that drive employment opportunities, technology has transformed the workplace and job duties, and employees increasingly place a premium on workplace flexibility," Richardson told the committee. "The result is an outdated and complex framework in which employers and employees must operate, and the need to modernize a 1930's Depression-era law for the 21st-century economy has never been more important."

Richardson's testimony, given on behalf of the National Council of Chain Restaurants and the National Retail Federation, represented the organizations' criticisms of the Obama administration's policies on federal overtime regulations. According to a recent NRF-commissioned study from Oxford Economics, the administration's proposed changes could impact millions of workers, costing restaurants and retail businesses more than $5 billion.

"Such a modification [to the federal overtime rules] would curb a manager's critical ability to multitask in a busy restaurant setting, undermine customer service, limit training opportunities for team members, diminish morale and force complicated assessments of time spent 'managing' in a restaurant setting," Richardson said. "[They] would impose immense costs on chain restaurants and would stifle opportunities for career advancement for hourly associates who wish to manage our restaurants."

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