Articles Discussing Overtime Exemptions Under The FLSA.

Imagine you are the personal assistant for the world’s most famous artist, Lady Gaga. You have the opportunity to travel the world, meet famous people and watch your boss hit the button to drop the “ball” in Times Square on New Years Eve. What could be better? Well, apparently, being paid overtime.

In a previous post in August, I questioned whether the pharmaceutical companies were losing the exemption battle as it related to pharmaceutical sales representatives and the outside sales exemption.

My last blog entry on travel time only touched on one issue that may arise as we see more employees being asked to take on additional responsibilities and assignments in lieu of hiring new personnel. Indeed, consolidation of jobs or responsibilities can lead to a number of other potential wage and hour issues that can have a significant impact on employers. One such issue arises when an exempt employee takes on additional jobs or duties that are non-exempt. How should an employee be treated for overtime purposes if working both exempt and non-exempt positions?

Another in our series of answers to questions from our September 28 webinar on wage and hour law in higher education:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an initiative by the U.S. Department of Labor, IRS and various state agencies to launch a coordinated crack-down on employers who misclassify employees as independent contractors. Recently, a U.S. District Court in Ohio issued a ruling that nicely illustrates the problem of misclassifcation and the potential liabilities that employers can face as a result.

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 Company provide extra compensation to exempt employees for their work on this project?

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 necessary exercise of discretion and independent judgment to meet the requirements of the exemption. The sales representatives did not directly sell pharmaceutical products, instead individualizing Schering’s canned sales pitch to promote certain products to identified customers. At the end of the day, the sales representatives simply used the core messages and promotional strategies developed by Schering, rather than developing those messages and strategies themselves.