Obama has told his people to change the rules regarding overtime pay. Short form, he wants to raise the amount a worker can earn before they can be denied overtime (essentially unchanged since 1975 at $455 a week), and strip companies of the ability to falsely classify workers to exempt classifications (managerial or professional). Needless to say the GOP and their gods hate the idea; it would keep them from stealing countless hundreds of thousands of man hours worth of work every week, and might even force them to hire back some of the workers they fired in the name of 'efficiency'.

In fairness, one supposes that the oligarchs who own the GOP do see stealing labor as a great deal more efficient than paying for it. They've never actually admitted that this was the plan, though; and I don't think they're going to start now.

But back to Obama. He's only got about two years to get this done; it has to be past all the publishing deadlines and endless etc before any Republican has the smallest chance of running the White House, or the Republicans will once again simply refuse to honor it (as they did when Dubya took over from Clinton). Alas, changing the wage threshold and the classification rules may be a bit much to get done by then. But fear not! Just raising the pay threshold to what it was in 1975 (adjusted for inflation, $1000 a week) would sweep some 5 million workers into the protected category no matter what their nominal job classification; so sticking to that will accomplish the lion's share of what needs to be done by itself, and probably in a great deal less time.

Oh, yes. Enforcing this will fall on an empty chair; the nominee for that job is still awaiting confirmation. It might be time to do something about that.