FLSA - Sales Persons

x:o Being in the mortgage industry, my company has about 80% of our staff classified as Exempt, using the Outside Sales Personnel category which Paychex gave us a printout describing in great detail.

Today we received a bulletin from an industry newsletter notifying us that ... a member of the Mortgage Broker group "was recently notified by the Department of Labor that it owes $140,000 in back pay to its loan officers. The company paid its loan officers a commission. The commission earned was less than the amount the loan officers were entitled to receive pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") minimum wage requirements. Mortgage companies must pay their loan officers at least minimum wage and overtime pay, even during periods when no commissions were earned and even if, on an annualized basis, the loan officer’s income far exceeds the minimum wage."

We like our current situation because our exempts are responsible for 100% of their benefits and we do not have to track their hours, and non-exempts get portions of benefits company paid. As you can tell, we would have a huge problem if we had to change our classification of 80% of our staff.

Question: How do you handle your outside sales persons, and have you heard of this ruling pertaining to sales people?

Any information you may have would be so helpful. Thank you in advance!

Comments

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  • I don't believe your mortgage/loan personnel would be considered outside sales, therefore would be eligible for overtime and should also be paid minimum wage. The following web site may be helpful.


    [url]www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/hrg.htm#8[/url]
  • I appreciate the link. I have done a lot of research on the subject since I posted this, and have found that many mortgage companies call their loan officers exempt using the Outside Sales Personnel classificaiton, in fact it seems to be common practice.

    I think I may change the job description to include more specific exempt activities, so we can avoid questions. This will not change their current duties - since they spend at least 80% of their time selling, the employee is regularly away from the office, and is responsibile for uptaining contracts for services. Also, since we haven't finalized our job descriptions yet, this is the perfect time to change them to fit the expectations of the DOL.
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