another nail in the head

Broad Rules May Exempt Many Workers
http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/pubs/108-1-275.html

...for example, administrative workers will have no right to overtime pay if
they earn at least $23,660 and meet both of these DOL requirements (taken
verbatim from the FLSA fact sheet):
The employee's primary duty must be the performance of office or nonmanual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers; and The employee's primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance.
Employee attorney Amanda Farahany sees this language as an opening for employers to deny overtime pay to almost any office worker whose occupation is not specifically listed as nonexempt.
“Does that test mean that the receptionist who decides how to route a phone call is exercising discretion and is exempt?” asks Farahany, a partner with Barrett & Farahany LLP in Atlanta.

What About the Unions?
Few union workers are covered by FLSA overtime pay regulations, but organizers still worry that their members will be hurt indirectly if their nonunion peers lose overtime rights. “Whenever labor standards in general are weakened, the next time the union contract is up, the company says, ‘Our competitors don't pay overtime,'
and then they try to weaken the contract,” says Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the
Communications Workers of America in Washington, DC.

In the end, some workers in high-demand occupations will see their overtime pay protected by market forces rather than federal regulation. “Even if someone has duties that fit the definition of exempt, that doesn't mean they can't be paid overtime,” says Ronald Bird, chief economist at the Employment Policy Foundation in Washington, DC.

For example, many hourly healthcare professionals will keep their overtime pay, simply because their employers can't afford to lose them to the competition.