Under direction from the White House, the U.S. Department of Labor last week made the first change in a dozen years to the nation’s overtime pay rules.

Under the new regulation, which goes into effect Dec. 1, most salaried workers earning up to $47,476 a year will be eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours during a week. The previous cutoff for overtime pay, set in 2004, was $23,660.

“For the past 40 years, overtime protections have been increasingly weakened,” vice president Joe Biden told reporters, noting that more than 60 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime in 1975 based on their salaries, but only 7 percent do today.

Opponents of the new rule, however, argue that the measure could cost billions of dollars and would undermine the morale of salaried employees by requiring them to account for every hour of their workdays.

The U.S. has had overtime rules since the passage of the 1938 law that established a federal minimum wage. The last time they were adjusted was in 2004 under President George W. Bush.