Exempt staff issues
GLC
174 Posts
I have heard about the Supreme Court of WA case Dan Drinkwitz & Caproni v. Alliant Techsystems, Inc. Because WA State law does not define salary-basis, they fall back on the FLSA for their interpretation. This employer, Alliant, had several practices that conflicted with FLSA. They had exempts record all hours worked, they set workday schedule requirements for exempts, they had weekly hour quotas and required make up for deficiences in the weekly hours. They allowed make-up through use of banked comp hours, working more than required in another week, or docking vacation leave time.
After hearing thi, I am concerned that we are doing some things incorrectly with our exempt staff, even though we are in KY. I work for a private, non-profit agency. Some of the things that we do are as follows: We require all exempt employees to complete a timesheet. Many of our grants and funding sources require that we keep track of an many of our exempt employee's time for billing purposes so we just require all exempt staff to complete one. All employees are required to work 37.5 hours per week, including exempt staff. Employees can flex their hours during the week to get in the 37.5 hours,including exempt staff. We allow exempt employees to accrue comp time. An exempt employee could work 35 hours in the week and use 2.5 hours of comp time to make up the difference. If an employees calls in sick, we deduct the time from their sick bank. If they have no more sick time, we would deduct the time from their vacation bank. If they did not have any vacation time remaining, we would then pay the employee, but they would have a negative sick balance and would owe us the hours back from their sick bank once they accrued them.
I think if some of our employees knew about the rules and reg from the FLSA, we would have many abusers. Therefore, since we have bona fide leave polices tied to compensation, i.e. sick, vacation, and comp time, we expect employees to use this time that they have.
Can someone help me clear this up. Thanks
After hearing thi, I am concerned that we are doing some things incorrectly with our exempt staff, even though we are in KY. I work for a private, non-profit agency. Some of the things that we do are as follows: We require all exempt employees to complete a timesheet. Many of our grants and funding sources require that we keep track of an many of our exempt employee's time for billing purposes so we just require all exempt staff to complete one. All employees are required to work 37.5 hours per week, including exempt staff. Employees can flex their hours during the week to get in the 37.5 hours,including exempt staff. We allow exempt employees to accrue comp time. An exempt employee could work 35 hours in the week and use 2.5 hours of comp time to make up the difference. If an employees calls in sick, we deduct the time from their sick bank. If they have no more sick time, we would deduct the time from their vacation bank. If they did not have any vacation time remaining, we would then pay the employee, but they would have a negative sick balance and would owe us the hours back from their sick bank once they accrued them.
I think if some of our employees knew about the rules and reg from the FLSA, we would have many abusers. Therefore, since we have bona fide leave polices tied to compensation, i.e. sick, vacation, and comp time, we expect employees to use this time that they have.
Can someone help me clear this up. Thanks
Comments
But after that, you are wading into trouble. An exempt employee must be paid his or her full salary regardless of hours worked that day. As long as the exempt is getting all of his or her work done, there is no need to require a minimum hour per week. You can have normal working hours with exempt, and expect them to be in the office if their job duties require it (for example, if the exempt employee works with clients -- you would expect the employee to be in the office when the clients call). But requiring minimum hours is a problem.
Also, Comp time is only allowed under the law for government employees. And it is very highly regulated. It is not a term that a non-governmental employer should use.
Good Luck!