Exempted employee-reduced hours

Jo Ann

One of our employee's daughter works for a small company in town and is paid like everyone else as a salaried-exempt employee whether or not she or any of them should be classified that way. There is no overtime paid and they don't even get a paycheck stub - just direct deposit.

Now she is pregnant and has been put on reduced days by her physician till delivery and the company does not want to pay her for the full day but only for the hours she actually works.

I thought that salaried-exempt employees were paid for the day if they came in to work any part of it.

Am I mistaken about this or is this a company just trying to have its cake and eat it too?

Down_the_Middle

If the company does not have a bona-fide sick leave (illness) program to augment the reduced work hours, I think they're on the hook to pay for partial day attendance. Pay reductions for partial day absences are a problem. Now... they may reclassify the position as parttime exempt and thereby avoid some of the otherwise awkward problems, or might expect her to "get the job done" with fewer hours and no change in pay.

Rockie

This company is playing a dangerous game with the DOL. If they pursue having everyone declared exempt, they should bite the bullet and pay this employee like they would a bona fide exempt employee.

Pork

Jo Ann look in your mail box for my message. There are companies that are exempt from FLSA but not many. Pork

Theresa Gegen TX

There is a status that employees can be in called salaried non-exempt. The employee would be due overtime for all hours over 40. So just because they call her "salaried" does not mean that they are violating wage laws by reducing her pay. If she has worked overtime, and has not been paid for it, then the company may have violated wage laws.

She needs to determine:

1. Is her position truly exempt (that is based on her job duties).
2. Is she entitled to be paid her salary if she does not work for the entire week if she is exempt? Because she is out for a medical condition, that may be covered by FMLA, she might not be entitled to full pay for the week. (I believe that the FMLA has special rules about paying salaried employees who are taking intermittant leave).
3. If she is not exempt, does the company owe her back overtime pay? Has she ever worked more than 40 hours in a week and does she have any proof of it?

Good Luck!

Rockie

Theresa: Could you explain to me exactly what a "salaried" non-exempt person is? The only time I have ever seen anything like this is in the manufacturing arena where supervisors are paid half time for hours worked in excess of 40? How do you determine the difference between a salaried non-exempt and a true exempt and what criteria do you use for a salaried non-exempt.

Thanks!

moneyman

We have used the salary non-exempt in the past. They received a standard base pay which was 86.67 hours (on a semi-monthly cycle x24=2080hrs), then adjusted for actual hours worked once a month. This worked well, for most employees. We try to discourage overtime and discourage unpaid time. If someone left a little early for an appointment one day, they were expected to make it up that week. We didn't count actual hours in each pay period to compare to the 86.67, but we counted any departures from the normally scheduled work weeks. Each day was supposed to be recorded as 8 hours, and each week 40 hours. If you worked over or under in that particular week, then we made an adjustment. Part of the problem was that time records were kept on a calendar month, so that when the work week was split between months (like most months are) then we had to compare 2 months to determine if OT was due for a work week.

It became too much work, we changed to reporting hourly, non-exempt bi-weekly with a one week lag. So, now it is paid exactly as worked within each period.

Jo Ann

Pork,

Thanks for the info. I'll pass it along.

njjel

Where can we find "salaried non-exempt" defined?