Lisa Becker, Director of Human Resources for the school district explained that the Fair Labor Standards Act was created by the Department of Labor in order to determine what classes of employees could be exempt from overtime.
The exemption for overtime is referred to as a white collar exemption and applies to salaried positions that make a certain amount of money and perform executive, administrative, or professional duties.
The current test requires that an employee make a minimum of $455 per week to be exempt from overtime payment.
Employees who are non exempt “must receive pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than one and one-half their regular rates of pay. This is referred to as ‘overtime’ pay.”
In December the exemption standards will change to those employees earning a minimum of $913 per week.
Thus additional employees will now qualify for overtime pay (as non-exempt) since the standard for exemption is moving to a higher pay grade.
Becker stated that the district needed to consider their options in complying with the new standards.
Becker gave the following two options:
1. Reclassify the employees that no longer qualify as exempt to non-exempt.
2. Raise salaries to keep these employees/positions in compliance.
There are approximately 42 affected employees and option 2 is estimated to cost $462,000 without fringes.
Staff recommended changing the job descriptions from exempt to non-exempt for the following positions:
Accountant
District Technology Specialist
Educational Diagnostician
Food and Nutritional Asst. Manager
Food and Nutrition Elem-Middle Manager
Food and Nutrition High-K-8 Manager
Programmer- Analyst
Registered Nurse for medically fragile children
Route Specialist
Senior Programmer – Analyst
Transportation Safety & Training Specialist
Pay will not be reduced due to this change and job descriptions will not change. These employees will have to track hours worked over 40 hours and request the comp time.
“I would imagine that there are few of these employees that will go into an overtime situation,” said Becker.
“There are several of these employees that have never worked over 40 hours in a week but some of them will,” she explained.
Teachers are not affected by this change because the duties standard did not change. Teachers are still exempt through that standard. The duties standard for exemption applies to those who “primarily perform executive, administrative, or professional duties…”
The Board tentatively agreed to proceed with option 1 at the workshop on 10/4/16.