Unless Congress intervenes, this new rule will go into effect on August 23, 2004.

Part 541 of the new rule redefines which workers are categorized as salaried professionals, administrative managers, and executives, and, therefore, exempt from federal overtime protections.

Although the Department of Labor correctly asserts that the status of salaried registered nurses remains unchanged under this new rule, it ignores the fact that most registered nurses are paid on an hourly basis. The definition of a salaried employee has been altered to allow salaried compensation to be calculated on an hourly or a shift basis, on top of a guaranteed minimum. This creates a degree of legal ambiguity that employers may try to exploit. Creating doubt about registered nurses' right to overtime pay threatens ongoing efforts to retain and recruit nurses - particularly in a time when mandatory overtime is a common practice and RNs are in short supply.

The concern is, if the economic disincentive of paying time-and-a-half is removed, employers are even more likely to rely on mandatory overtime as a regular nurse-staffing tool. A survey by ANA found that more than two-thirds of nurses already report working some form of mandatory, or unplanned, overtime every month.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there already is a shortage of nearly 139,000 registered nurses in the United States. The federal pay guidelines should encourage the recruitment and retention of nurses. Raising doubts in the minds of hard-working RNs, as well as potential nurses, about whether they will qualify for overtime pay does not accomplish that goal.