Wage & Hour Defense Blog : Wage & Hour Lawyer & Attorney : Epstein Becker Green Law Firm : DOL Enforcement, FLSA Coverage

By Betsy Johnson

On April 1, 2010, the Department of Labor (DOL) launched its “We Can Help” public awareness campaigned aimed at educating workers about their rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The DOL set up a dedicated website for the “We Can Help” campaign (http://www.dol.gov/wecanhelp/) which provides guidance to employees who wish to file a complaint against their employers for FLSA violations.

On April 26, 2010, the DOL announced a new, enhanced, regulatory and enforcement strategy called “Plan/Prevent/Protect” (http://www.dol.gov/regulations/2010RegNarrative.htm). This new strategy is designed to promote a “safe, secure, and equitable” workplace for all employees and leverages DOL resources across the spectrum of DOL worker protection agencies, including the Wage and Hour Division, and will focus on employer compliance with the laws enforced by the DOL.

Given the spotlight placed on employee education and employer compliance by these DOL initiatives, companies are likely to see an increase in DOL and state agency enforcement proceedings and an increase in individual civil actions and class action litigation involving wage and hour claims for the foreseeable future. 

California continues to be at the forefront of the wage and hour litigation wars, and the issue of the proper classification of employees as “exempt” or “non-exempt” remains an active battleground in the state and federal courts, as well as in proceedings before the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE). 

It should come as no surprise to most human resource professionals and in-house counsel that California utilizes a different test for determining the “white collar” exemptions (executive, professional and administrative) than is utilized under the FLSA. However, employers who are unaware of or ignore the differences between California law and the FLSA regarding the “white collar” exemptions are exposing their companies to significant liability for unpaid overtime, “off the clock” work, meal/rest periods, uniform violations, improper deductions and record keeping violations under California law.

Under both the FLSA and California law, the employer has the burden of proving the one of the exemptions applies—establishing exempt status is an “affirmative defense” in wage/hour litigation. Walling v. General Industries Co., 330 U.S. 545, 67 S.Ct. 883 (1947).  Job titles are immaterial to a determination of exempt status. Therefore, we recommend that employers conduct an internal “audit” of the actual job functions of the employees in question before classifying them as “exempt,” under either the FLSA or California law. 

Recently, a client asked us to develop a “user friendly” comparison of the FLSA and California “white collar” exemptions. While nothing is really “user friendly” when it comes to California wage and hour law, we developed the chart below to provide some basic guidance for our client and wish to share it here.

 Important Note: Where the California statutory, regulatory or case law are more employee-favorable than the FLSA (which is most cases), the California rules will apply. 

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The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage & Hour Division has issued two new opinion letters addressing circumstances under which employers may not reduce the hours of exempt employees without running afoul of the "salary basis" test and risking loss of the employees' exempt status.  

First, some background.  Employees exempt from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime requirements as professional, executive, or administrative employees must be paid a salary of at least $455 per week. Under 29 C.F.R. § 541.602(a),

[a]n employee will be considered to be paid on a "salary basis" . . . if the employee regularly receives each pay period . . . a predetermined amount constituting all or part of the employee’s compensation, which amount is not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed. . . . An employee is not paid on a salary basis if deductions from the employee’s predetermined compensation are made for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business. If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available.

In the first opinion letter, the employer sought to reduce the hours worked by employees using the following system:

Your client proposes occasionally reducing the hours worked by exempt employees due to short-term business needs (e.g., low patient census). In such cases, the employer offers “voluntary time off” (VTO), where employees may, at their option, use paid annual, personal, or vacation leave, but continue to accrue employment benefits. The employer approves VTO on a first-come, first-served basis. If there are insufficient volunteers for VTO, the employer requires “mandatory time off” (MTO) under a seniority-based rotational method. Exempt employees required to take MTO may use accrued paid leave or take unpaid MTO. If the employee elects not to use accrued paid leave or does not have sufficient accrued paid leave to cover the VTO or MTO, the employer deducts the amount equal to the VTO or MTO from the employee’s salary, if it is shorter than one workweek. For unpaid VTO or MTO lasting an entire workweek, the employer does not pay the salary for that pay period. Salaried exempt employees may take VTO or be assigned MTO in one-day increments.

The DOL opined that salary deductions due to MTO lasting less than a workweek violate the salary basis requirement and may cause the loss of exempt status.  "Deductions from salary due to day-to-day or week-to-week determinations of the operating requirements of the business are precisely the circumstances the salary basis requirement is intended to preclude." 

In the second opinion letter, the employer proposed requiring salaried exempt employees to stay home or leave work early during periods of insufficient work.  The employer would deduct the non-work time from the employees’ accrued paid time-off accounts. The employees would receive their regular salaries so long as they had sufficient hours in their PTO accounts to cover the non-work periods. If an employee’s accrued PTO was exhausted, the employee’s salary would be reduced in full-day increments, except that in no event would an employee’s salary be reduced below the $455 per week.

The DOL opined that this proposal would also run afoul of the salary basis test. 

If an employer requires that an exempt employee work less than a full workweek, the employer must pay the employee’s full salary even if: (1) the employer does not have a bona-fide benefits plan; (2) the employee has no accrued benefits in the leave bank; (3) the employee has limited accrued leave benefits, and reducing that accrued leave will result in a negative balance; or (4) the employee already has a negative balance in the accrued leave bank. 

The DOL also opined that if an exempt employee’s accrued PTO is exhausted and the periods of insufficient work continued, the employer would not be permitted to send the employee home and pay him a reduced salary for the week.  The DOL distinguished this situation from the scenario discussed in a 1970 opinion letter, in which the employer was considering a permanent change in the work schedule from 52 five-day workweeks to 47 five-day workweeks and 5 four-day workweeks. "In that case," the DOL noted, "the salary basis requirement was not circumvented because all the exempt employees were to be paid according to a bona fide reduction of one-fifth of their salaries for a fixed schedule of five annually recurring four-day workweeks."

The distinguishing principle was stated in a 1995 DOL opinion letter:

... a fixed reduction in salary effective during a period when a company operates a shortened workweek due to economic conditions would be a bona fide reduction not designed to circumvent the salary basis payment. Therefore, the exemption would remain in effect as long as the employee receives the minimum salary required by the regulations and meets all the other requirements for the exemption.

My takeaway from these opinion letters is this:  Employers that are considering reducing their exempt employees' hours due to insufficient work must proceed very carefully.  Reducing exempt employees' hours of work, and reducing their pay correspondingly, may be permissible if the changes are carried out in accordance with a fixed schedule over an extended period of time.  An employer may not make reductions in work hours and pay based on day-to-day or week-to-week determinations of how much work is available.  Such reductions will run afoul of the salary basis test, risk forfeiture of the employees' exempt status, and expose the employer to overtime claims from the employees when their workload increases.     

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