Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has announced that he will soon introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to block implementation of the Department of Labor’s final overtime rule. (For details of the Final Rule, see our article, Labor Department Announces Final Rule Amending Overtime Regulations for ‘White Collar’ Workers.)

Senator Alexander’s May 18, 2016, statement came after DOL released its long-awaited rule updating regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act governing overtime exemptions for executive, administrative, and professional employees — the “white collar exemptions.”

The rule raises from $23,660 to $47,476 the salary threshold under which workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay if they work more than 40 hours in any given week. Furthermore, for the first time, DOL will update the salary level every three years without specific rulemaking.

“It is likely that the President would veto any Congressional Review Act resolution to block implementation of its overtime rule,” according to Garen Dodge, Practice Lead of Jackson Lewis’ Government Relations Practice. “However, passage would demonstrate increasing Congressional resistance to the Administration’s aggressive push to regulate the workplace in its final months,” he added.