In yet another use of an executive order to take action and bypass a stalemated Congress, President Barack Obama has signed an order asking the Labor Department to come up with new rules that’ll expand the number of workers that can get overtime pay. The expected partisan reactions are now coming in:

Saying it’s “just fair” for more Americans to earn overtime pay, President Obama on Thursday directed the Labor Department to come up with new rules to expand the number of workers eligible.

Before sitting down to sign a presidential memorandum to “modernize” work rules, Obama told a crowd gathered at the White House that the current standards are no longer adequate.

Many workers in the U.S. earn roughly an hourly wage but don’t qualify for overtime because they’re designated as management. In some cases, they don’t do much supervising, White House economists say.

“It doesn’t make sense that this allows salaried workers to be paid less than the minimum wage,” Obama said.

“Overtime’s a pretty simple idea,” he said. “If you have to work more, you should get paid more.”

This is just the latest Obama action on this front:

The memorandum is the latest part of Obama’s administrative plan to raise worker pay on his own authority and without action by lawmakers. Already this year he has ordered federal contractors to pay workers $10.10 an hour, the minimum wage that he thinks should be extended to the whole country. It’s an idea unlikely to pass Congress.

The rule changes ordered Thursday don’t require action by Congress. The Department of Labor can enact regulations raising the salary threshold for overtime eligibility, which White House aides say has not kept up with inflation.

The agency could also redefine the meaning of “supervisory duties” to ensure more workers qualify for overtime pay.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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