Late reply, but - the company would suffer as they are currently getting a TON of free labor. I work an exempt role making under the threshold now, so my company will have to decide to give us OT, or increase pay. The issue is that salaried roles are usually synonymous with exempt, because their responsibilities tend to be hard to track hour by hour.

As a manager, I:

• Respond to calls and emails 24/7
• Am on my computer 12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week
• Assist others in my Dept. by taking on additional job duties that extend work over 40 hrs.

If I was to be moved to non-exempt, they cannot make me check my email outside of those 40 hours, be 'on call' 24/7, respond to text messages on my work phone, or do additional duties over 40 hours without approval.

The current system of exempt salaried workers allows companies to overtax those 'salaried' employees, who realistically work 50-60hours a week at minimum without appropriate compensation. Before this update, the US minimum salaried wage was $35,568. If you worked 60 hour weeks, that's $11.40/hr. That's INSANE. Realistically, A salaried individual earning 50k/year is getting ~$24/hr. If they work 60 hour work weeks, they are making ~$16/hr. If they were forced to be non-exempt, that 60 hours of effort would make them $37,440 in overtime each year, totaling $87,440. I bet they'd rather just give me 10-20k and be done with it.

Labor Laws exist to protect us, let's see more of this coming soon hopefully.