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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has begun to take action on two Obama-era regulations that were consistently opposed by ABC.   

In a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta announced he will issue a Request for Information (RFI) in order to collect information from the public on the overtime rule. The RFI will likely act as the first step in issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a process that would change or rescind the rule permanently.

The overtime rule, which was blocked in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Court in of Texas in November, 2016, would have doubled the current minimum standard salary level for exemption from $23,660 to $47,476 annually and automatically increased it every three years.

On June 12, DOL issued a new notice of proposed rulemaking to rescind the “persuader” rule, officially named the “Interpretation of the ‘Advice’ Exemption in Section 203(c) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.”

Comments on rescinding the persuader rule, which ABC and its members have opposed since it was first proposed in 2011, are due August 11.

The final persuader rule never went into effect. On Nov. 16, 2016, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas permanently blocked the DOL’s persuader rule. In finding the rule unlawful, the court maintained employers’ right to obtain advice from labor relations experts.