AUGUSTA – With both sides saying they each simply want to hold on to their money, worker groups and businesses Wednesday discussed new federal overtime eligibility regulations and proposed state rules that supporters say would trump the federal requirements.

In August, the Bush administration implemented new federal overtime-eligibility regulations that were intended to simplify what was viewed by businesses as a complex set of requirements that were burdensome to comprehend.

A week later, the state Department of Labor proposed a set of rules that the Gov. John Baldacci administration believes will protect overtime pay for Maine workers who could lose it under the new federal rules.

The proposed state rules define administrative, professional and salaried workers and what disqualifies them from overtime eligibility, such as establishing 80 percent as the minimum amount of actual work time spent as a manager to be treated as one for pay purposes. The federal rules do not list any percentage of time.

The state and federal rules also differ as to what minimum weekly salary amount would disqualify workers from receiving overtime pay. The federal wage threshold would be a minimum of $455 per week, while the state amount would be $366 per week. Businesses say the lower state number makes more workers eligible for overtime.

Labor Department Commissioner Laura Fortman said the state’s proposed rules would “maintain the status quo” for eligible Maine workers that had existed before the federal regulations were put into place.

On Wednesday, a state Bureau of Labor Standards hearing was a modern-day version of the classic workers-versus-business fights that took place in the 1930s, when employee overtime rights first were approved by the federal government.

The differences were many. Businesses want to have in place the new federal rules and not be obligated to follow the state’s rules, too, because it’s too costly to do both. Union groups and other workers’ rights advocates want the proposed state protections because families rely on that extra income to meet expenses.

A list of the differing viewpoints includes:

. Eligible workers. Businesses say at least 5.3 million new workers nationally are eligible for overtime under the new federal rules, and the proposed state regulations will add a greater number of Maine workers to the list of those who recently gained eligibility under the federal government’s plan – an additional cost to doing business in state.

The business community, including the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, did not specify an exact number of newly eligible workers, stating that it wants Maine to give the federal rules some time to play out so that a proper analysis can be conducted.

Already, since the federal rules were implemented, “many employers have changed employees from exempt [from overtime] to nonexempt,” said Eric Uhl, a Portland attorney who reviewed the state’s eligibility rules for the Maine State Chamber.

Uhl was not speaking as a representative of the Chamber at Wednesday’s hearing.

Labor unions and others say the federal rules disqualify 6 million people nationally from being eligible for overtime. In Maine, according to the Maine Women’s Lobby, 1,100 female preschool teachers, 6,640 female low-level sales workers, and 5,630 female administrative office workers will lose overtime rights under the new federal rules unless Maine’s proposed worker protections are put into place.

Among the workers who will lose overtime eligibility under the federal rules are computer operators, nurses, corrections officers, chefs, financial services workers and retail employees given managerial-sounding job titles without any authority or pay to go along with it, unions say. The titles make them exempt from overtime eligibility, union representatives said.

“I think if one working person in the state of Maine loses overtime, that’s one too many,” said J.R. Gibson of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 2327 in central Maine.

. Workload. Businesses say that if the proposed state rules are implemented, the hardest hit timewise will be the state’s smaller companies that have no human resources departments to sort out two sets of worker overtime eligibility requirements and that risk lawsuits from employees if they’re wrong.

David Clough, executive director of the state branch of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said that nationally, small businesses will spend $676 million in extra costs just to comply with the new federal rules, and that is before even more is paid in overtime wages to newly eligible workers.

Unions and workers’ rights advocates say employees losing overtime eligibility under the federal rules will be forced to work longer hours for no additional pay.

“It will lead to an explosion of overwork,” said Lauralee Raymond, legislative coordinator for the Maine Women’s Lobby.

John Hanson, director of the Bureau of Labor Information at the University of Maine, said that when overtime eligibility laws were first implemented in 1938, they were written “not as an incentive to pay overtime but to stop businesses from working people beyond 40 hours a week.”

Now, he said, between 10 percent and 30 percent of workers’ annual wages are from overtime pay.

“They depend on it,” Hanson said. “They earn every penny of it.”

. Job creation. Businesses say that because of the extra expense they face complying with two separate sets of overtime eligibility rules, they will not be able to grow jobs or increase workers’ wages.

“You can certainly argue the public policy benefits [of the state’s proposed rules],” said Peter Gore, senior legislative policy analyst with the Maine State Chamber. “But it contributes to the bottom-line costs of doing business in the state of Maine. Simply put, we think the rules are anti-small and large business.”

Unions and workers’ rights advocates say businesses will not create any new jobs.

The new federal rules “create an incentive to put more work on [overtime] exempt workers,” said Christine Hastedt, public policy specialist with the Maine Equal Rights Partners. “That disincentifies them to hire more workers, and I think we are all looking for new workers in today’s economy.”

The state Bureau of Labor Standards is accepting public written comment on the proposed overtime rules by Monday, Oct. 18. Then the bureau will address public comment in a statement and make a decision as to whether to accept the new rules.

If the rules are approved, the business community already is preparing to fight the changes through the state Legislature, according to participants at the hearing.