Assembly Bill 44, which was passed in the past legislative session, allows Nevada workers who are eligible for overtime to address overtime disputes to the office of Michael Tanchek, Nevada labor commissioner. Previously any workers who make more than $7.73 an hour or 1 1/2 times the minimum wage had to address claims to the U.S. Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division.

Those workers who make less than $7.73 an hour were already eligible to have their overtime disputes addressed by the Nevada labor commissioner's office.

"You still have to comply with the law," Christina Dugan, director of government affairs of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, said. "It's just who's going to enforce it."

Currently, both federal and Nevada labor laws state that all workers eligible for overtime must be paid time-and-a-half for any hours they work beyond 40 hours in a week. However, the state also has a law that requires employers to pay workers who make less than $7.73 an hour overtime for any hours that exceed eight hours in a 24-hour period.

Jim Sala, director of organizing for the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said the change in the law was necessary to ensure all workers eligible for overtime could get their disputes addressed efficiently.

"Having the Nevada labor commissioner take care of Nevadans, that's a good thing," Sala said. "The labor commissioner does a much better job and a much quicker job of adjudicating this stuff."

There are two U.S. Labor Department Wage and Hour Division regional offices in Nevada -- one in Las Vegas, the other in Reno. However, Sala said, the Labor Department is less efficient in adjudicating overtime complaints and they tend to take more of an interest in bigger cases than smaller ones.

"The Department of Labor has a tendency to deal with much larger cases," Sala said. "I don't want to slam them too hard. It's just not funded well by the federal government."

He also said the labor commissioner's office will be able to more effectively enforce the overtime law because Tanchek has a relationship with the Nevada State Contractors Board.

"(If) you get a couple of complaints, there's the potential that you could lose your ability to do contracts in the state," Sala said. "That kind of coordination wasn't possible with the Department of Labor."

A spokesperson for the Labor Department defended the Wage and Hour Division's regional offices, saying, "We believe that Wage and Hour has a great track record and we stand by that."

Sala said before, those who worked on public works projects could address their overtime concerns to the Nevada labor commissioner, but if they had worked on private projects, problems needed to be taken to the Labor Department.

"Now you have one-stop shopping," Sala said. He also said another bill, Assembly Bill 83, which also passed, ensures workers who perform work on public projects will be paid overtime for both their prevailing wage work and their private work, even if it occurs in the same pay period. Those workers are to be paid overtime for any time they work that exceeds eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a work week.

Sala said the union originally penned the bill to allow all workers who make more than $7.73 an hour and are not working on public works projects to be eligible for overtime if they work more than eight hours in a day along with the 40-hour weekly maximum.

However, he said, during the legislative session, business advocates strongly opposed increasing the number of workers who are eligible for daily overtime, so that provision was dropped.

"In order to do good for the rest of the bill we modified the bill and amended it," Sala said. "Maybe next time we'll be able to get that in there."

Dugan said that businesses opposed an increase in the number of workers eligible for overtime pay if they work more than eight hours in a day because many workers prefer a nontraditional schedule.

"It was detrimental to employees," Dugan said. "I think a lot of nurses like the three 12's (three 12-hour days a week) schedule. There was a lot of work done with the business community and the Carpenters Union."

Tanchek said he doesn't expect the increased number of cases to overwhelm his staff of 20. The labor commissioner's office handled 5,211 cases during a two-year period that ended in February.

"I'm thinking at this point we can absorb the increase, but you never know," Tanchek said.

Alana Roberts covers courts and labor relations for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4059 or by e-mail at alanar@lasvegassun.com.