Continuing a pattern of romanticizing economic hardships that limit employee choice and force workers to put in long hours for low pay, right-wing media have claimed that expanding overtime compensation for salaried workers undermines work ethic by changing “the notion of hard work.”

Right-wing media were quick to attack President Obama's new plan to alter Labor Department pay requirements to expand the number of salaried workers who qualify for overtime. Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck warned that this move “undercuts work ethic,” and co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed, encouraging viewers to weigh in on the “new American work ethic” and how the plan is “discouraging those, it seems, that want to work more to get further along, with these new rules.”

On the March 12 edition of Fox Radio's Kilmeade & Friends, Fox host Martha MacCallum similarly warned that workers would be forced into “an hourly wage category,” which she said, gives employees “a whole different mentality.” The Wall Street Journal lamented the change in a March 12 editorial:

The rules will particularly harm workers who want to climb the economic ladder by going the extra mile for their employers and demonstrating why they deserve promotion. Now many businesses will tell employees with ambition they can't work long hours.

Fox & Friends also ran an on-air graphic on March 13 that read, “The New American Way: New Rule Seems To Change The Notion Of Hard Work.”

These reflexive attacks highlight conservative media's tendency to denounce proposals designed to benefit workers by romanticizing economic hardship. Conservative outlets like Fox News have previously commended the “uniquely American” desire to “work more, work harder” and take on “two and three jobs to make ends meet” as something that is being undermined by policies that offer workers more flexibility.