4 universities in state cancel plan for raises

They cite court’s decision to block new overtime rule

FAYETTEVILLE -- Salaries will not be increased as planned for postdoctoral researchers at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture after a court ruling blocked implementation of a new overtime rule, a division official said Wednesday.

The rule, from the U.S. Department of Labor, would have taken effect Dec. 1 and raised the overtime annual salary threshold to $47,476 from $23,660 for "white collar" executive, administrative and professional workers.

At four of the state's largest employers in higher education -- Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, the UA System Division of Agriculture, the UA-Fayetteville campus, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences -- a combined total of more than 2,600 workers would have been affected by the rule, spokesmen for the universities have said.

Officials said last week that most of these workers were expected to become newly eligible for overtime or compensatory time off because their salaries are below the $47,476 overtime threshold established in the rule.

But rather than becoming eligible for overtime, a few workers -- such as dozens of postdoctoral researchers who are sometimes referred to as junior scientists -- were expected to get pay raises that would increase their salaries to above the new threshold so they would remain exempt from overtime.

Postdoctoral researchers, who hold advanced degrees, work long hours in pursuit of scientific discoveries often in hopes of securing jobs down the line as college professors.

On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas granted a nationwide preliminary injunction halting implementation of the overtime rule. Twenty-one states, including Arkansas, had sued to block the rule, citing concerns from business and government employers about possible layoffs resulting from the rule's implementation.

Now, for the UA System Division of Agriculture, "pending a final resolution of this matter," no previously planned salary increases will be implemented, Barbara Batiste, the Division of Agriculture's Research and Extension compliance officer, wrote in an email.

Last week, Batiste had said 32 Agriculture Division postdoctoral researchers would be seeing salaries increased so as to remain exempt from overtime, part of a total of 36 employees seeing salary increases. The UA System Division of Agriculture employs 1,187 people.

UAMS anticipated that a "majority" of its postdoctoral researchers would "have their salaries adjusted because significant overtime hours are required in those positions," Leslie Taylor, vice chancellor for communications and marketing at UAMS, said last week in an email.

"We plan to have a decision made by Dec. 1 regarding all of the postdoctoral fellows," Taylor said. She added Tuesday, after news of the court ruling, that "we still haven't made a final decision yet." UAMS, as of June, employed 78 full-time postdoctoral fellows who, on average, earned $41,370, according to a Democrat-Gazette analysis of information provided by UAMS.

A UA-Fayetteville spokesman said last week that the university was considering a few salary increases but the "vast majority" of affected workers would instead become eligible for overtime compensation.

Metro on 11/24/2016

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