Paul Davidson

USA TODAY

The nation’s leading small business trade group on Tuesday asked the Labor Department to delay a new rule making millions of Americans eligible for overtime pay, saying employers aren’t prepared to implement it when it goes into effect Dec. 1.

“In many cases, small businesses must reorganize their work forces and implement new systems for tracking hours, record keeping, and reporting,” says NFIB president Juanita Duggan. “They can’t just flip a switch and be in compliance.”

The group is asking for a delay until June 1.

But in a statement, David Weil, administrator of Labor’s wage and hour division, says officials provided businesses 190 days to comply, “more than three times what’s legally required.” He added, “The December 1 implementation date is a sufficient amount of time (more than six months) for employers to adjust to the new salary level.”

“America's workers have waited long enough for a fair days pay for a long days work.”

The rule, released in May, would double the threshold at which executive, administrative and professional employees are exempt from overtime pay to $47,476 from the current $23,660. It’s expected to make an additional 4.2 million workers eligible to receive time-and-a-half wages for each hour they put in beyond 40 a week.

$117 million gone: Oprah loses more than weight

The requirement will affect about 44% of the 5.5 million U.S. businesses with fewer than 500 employees, NFIB says. About 3.2 million of them employ 10 workers or less.

Large corporations with “lawyers, accountants and human resources specialists” who read technical federal notices “may prove able to cope with the new (rule) in a 25 week window of time,” NFIB said in its petition. “But the department cannot reasonably expect America’s small businesses to match them.”

NFIB officials say they continue to oppose the overtime rule and support a bill by Rep Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., that would phase in the new salary threshold over three years.

In the meantime, they say small businesses face a myriad hurdles as they grapple with compliance. Many don’t understand which of their workers qualify for overtime based on the executive, administrative and professional exemptions, says NFIB spokesman Jack Mozloom.

Others, he says, haven’t begun to install systems to track the hours of employees who had been exempt from overtime but now qualify.

American families finally got a big pay raise. Why it might not feel like it.

They also must decide how to respond to the requirement, Mozloom says. While some may simply convert salaried workers to hourly, track their hours and absorb the overtime costs, others are expected to limit the workers’ hours to no more than 40 a week and bring on part-time workers to make up the lost productivity.

Some are expected to raise employees’ salaries to the new threshold to avoid the overtime costs. Still others are likely to cut the workers’ base pay to offset the overtime expense, effectively dodging the requirement.

Nancy Hammer, policy counsel for the Society for Human Resource Management, says Small Businesses Administration roundtables held across the country and attended by SHRM officials also have revealed that many small firms are not aware of the December deadline.

“There are a lot of small businesses that aren't ready and aren’t aware of what is coming down the pike,” she says.