Separate Rules Would Be Needed

The Labor Department rules-even if they become finalized as proposed and are not blocked or modified in the meantime-would not directly apply to federal employees because federal overtime rules are set separately, by the Office of Personnel Management. However, federal unions believe that because the two sets of rules are supposed to be roughly parallel, there would be pressure to change the government’s internal policy as well. An additional complication is that in the federal sector, overtime policy for certain groups, including law enforcement officers and firefighters, is set in statute and could not be changed by administrative rule-making.