Q. My Company anticipates embarking on a big project this fall that will have extreme importance to the Company’s future and require extra hours at the office. The Company wants to give a little extra pay to employees who work on this important project. A number of these employees are classified as exempt. May the
Are Pharmaceutical Companies Losing the Exemption Battle?
Recently, another group of pharmaceutical sales representatives successfully demonstrated that they are not exempt from overtime under the FLSA. Kuzinski, et al., v. Schering Corp Focusing on the administrative exemption, the District Court of Connecticut held that the sales representatives’ work was not directly related to Schering’s management or general business operations and they lacked
The Myth of “Unauthorized” Overtime
Has something like this ever happened in your organization? You have a solid non-exempt employee working hard on a project. His supervisor is out of town and unreachable. In the supervisor’s absence, to get the job done, he works a few hours of overtime. When the supervisor gets back, he asks if she will approve
Do We Have to Pay Employees for Checking E-Mail Outside of Work? [Wage & Hour FAQ]
Q. Our company provides remote access to e-mail for all employees, and some of our hourly employees carry iPhones and Blackberries with access to their work e-mail. Most non-exempt employees only work during regular business hours, but some will occasionally check and respond to e-mail after hours or on weekends. Do we need to pay employees for this time? If so, how do we track it?
A. Yes, employees need to be paid for time spent reading or responding to work-related e-mail. If this occurs only sporadically and the time involved is truly de minimus – for example, if the employee occasionally types out “Thanks” or “OK” in response to a short message – it may not be an issue. However, if you do not have any mechanism for employees to track and report this time, you may have no way to prove that the time spent was in fact minimal. When a disgruntled current or former employee files a complaint asserting that they worked an hour or two extra every week for three years, will you be able to prove otherwise?
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