Millions more salaried American workers would be eligible for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week under a bill reintroduced Wednesday by Democratic legislators in both bodies of Congress.

The Restoring Overtime Pay Act, reintroduced by Reps. Alma Adams (D-NC) and Mark Takano (D-CA) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), would expand the provisions of a 2019 law by the same name.

According to Brown, less than 15% of all full-time salaried employees are guaranteed overtime pay right now. Under the newly reintroduced act, 55% of all salaried workers earning up to $45,000 per year would be eligible for overtime pay, and that salary amount would increase each year for five years, raising the salary cap to approximately $82,700 by 2027. Currently, only salaried workers who make $35,568 or less per year are eligible for overtime pay.

“Too often, so-called ‘exempt’ employees are exempted from fair treatment and a fair wage,” Adams, ranking member of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement

The legislation is endorsed by the National Employment Law Project, the AFL-CIO and the nonprofit WorkMoney.

“The current overtime laws are far too easily and often abused by employers who require their employees to work uncompensated hours to the tune of $4 billion per year. The US Department of Labor cannot adequately address these abuses and needs a better law to protect workers from these exploitative practices,” NELP President and CEO Rebecca Dixon said in a statement.

The legislation comes as the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division plans to publish its proposed overtime rule in May. The overtime rule sets the salary threshold used to determine which employees are eligible to receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours per week.

The overtime rule has not been updated since changes enacted in September 2019 that went into effect in January 2020. At that time, the weekly minimum salary for overtime exemptions was increased from $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to $684 per week ($35,568 per year).

The Supreme Court ruled in February that, under certain circumstances, “highly paid” nonsalaried employees can be eligible for overtime pay if they are paid on a daily basis. According to the court, even a highly compensated employee — in this case, a nonsalaried worker earning $200,000 — is entitled to overtime pay unless one or more specific overtime exemptions apply.

Employees are not “deprived of the [Fair Labor Standards Act] benefits simply because they are well paid,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority.