Late last month, the Senate referred the Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Appropriations Act to the Senate Committee on Appropriations for consideration. The House of Representatives passed its version (H.R. 4870) on June 20 with substantial bipartisan support, 340-73, after considering 80 different amendments. Since this is a wage and hour blog, you can
I’m an Executive, You’re an Executive, We’re All Executives! 8th Circuit Lowers the Bar for FLSA “Executive” Exemption
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued an opinion that essentially watered down the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime exemption for executives. This decision perhaps makes an unwitting case for President Obama’s intended overhaul of the FLSA’s white collar exemptions that we discussed recently.
An employer must satisfy four elements to take advantage of the FLSA’s executive exemption:
- The employer must pay the worker a salary of at least $455 per week;
- The employee’s primary duty must be management;
- The employee must customarily and regularly direct the work of two or more employees; and
- The employee must have the authority to hire or fire employees, or at least have the ability to offer suggestions and recommendations as to hiring, firing, advancement, promotion, or other status changes for employees, with the employer giving particular weight to those suggestions. 29 CFR § 541.100
This four-element standard is what remained after the Department of Labor’s 2004 revisions to the FLSA regulations that ditched what were then known as the “long test” and the “short test” under the former regulations. The long test had a lower salary basis and also required the employee to have regularly exercised discretionary powers to have devoted no more than 40% of their workweek to activities not directly and closely related to management. 29 C.F.R. § 541.1 (2003). The short test used a higher salary basis, but only required employees to regularly direct two or more employees and to have a primary duty of management. Id.
Because there is no objective test for determining what an employee’s “primary duty” is or what “particular weight” means, this has led to substantial litigation, including the Eighth Circuit’s Madden v. Lumber One Home Center decision last month.Continue Reading I’m an Executive, You’re an Executive, We’re All Executives! 8th Circuit Lowers the Bar for FLSA “Executive” Exemption
Obama Calls for Revisions of “White-Collar” FLSA Overtime Exemptions
In an unexpected move, the Obama administration officially announced today that it will issue a Presidential Memorandum to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) instructing its Secretary to update regulations regarding overtime protection for workers under the FLSA. Any changes to the regulation would be the first since 2004, when the Bush administration increased the
Compensating Non-Exempt Employees Webcast
Some of the most common questions we receive from clients involve how to properly compensate non-exempt employees. Join me on Thursday, November 29, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. CST, for a two-hour live webcast entitled “Understanding FLSA’s Compensable Time Requirements for Non-Exempt Employees.” I will be serving on a panel in which we will address the
Family Dollar Settles Store Manager Overtime Claim
On September 12, 2012, Family Dollar announced that it will pay up to $14 million to settle a class action in the Southern District of New York. Similar to other class actions filed against Family Dollar over the years, New York store managers claimed that the Company failed to pay them overtime. Although the agreement
Are Summer Camp Staff Exempt? [Lesser Known Exemptions]
Most regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the most common exemptions to the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, those being the “white collar” exemptions for executive, administrative, and professional employees. However, the FLSA also contains a number of less well-known exemptions covering specific establishments or industries. In this post
Supreme Court Finds Pharmaceutical Representatives Exempt From Overtime
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that pharmaceutical representatives are “outside salesmen” exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Christopher v. Smithkline Beecham Corp. (.pdf).
This has been a hotly-contested issue in the courts and the subject of a split between the federal appellate courts, with the Ninth
Court Rejects Challenge to DOL’s Interpretation That Mortgage Loan Officers are Non-exempt
I wanted to give our readers a quick update on the status of mortgage loan officers. In Mortgage Bankers Ass’n v. Solis, a federal district court in Washington D.C. recently rejected a challenge to the March 2010 DOL administrator’s interpretation that mortgage loan officers do not generally meet the administrative exemption under the FLSA. As
Can Employees Agree to Be Exempt? [Wage & Hour FAQs]
Q. Our employees consider themselves “professionals” and don’t want to be treated as hourly workers. If our employees agree to it, can we still treat them as “exempt” even if they don’t meet all of the requirements under the FLSA or state law?
A. In a word, no. This question comes up more often than you might think. In some cases, particular industries have developed a practice of treating certain categories of employees as “salaried” and assuming that they are exempt. In others, employees would simply rather be “salaried” or “exempt” because this suggests a higher status than an “hourly” position, or because they prefer not to have to track their time.
Unfortunately for employers, an employee’s choice generally had nothing to do with whether or not the employee can legitimately be classified as “exempt” from overtime requirements under state and federal law. With very few exceptions, the rights provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act and its state equivalents can’t be waived or modified by an agreement with the employee.
So how can employers manage employee expectations without running afoul of the law? Continue Reading Can Employees Agree to Be Exempt? [Wage & Hour FAQs]
Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives Found to be Exempt by Seventh Circuit
The Seventh Circuit recently weighed in on whether pharmaceutical sales representatives are exempt under the FLSA in Susan Schaeffer-LaRose v. Eli Lilly & Company. In this consolidated case, the Seventh Circuit focused on the administrative exemption in determining that the sales representatives were exempt. Because the Court found that the sales representatives met the