What Rights Do Exempt Management Employees Have?
Exempt employees are exempt from Department of Labor overtime regulations provided they meet certain salary and job duties tests as set out in the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you meet the duties and salary tests, you will receive the same amount of pay each week regardless of the number of hours or days you work in that week. There are certain events that can remove your exempt status and revert you to hourly pay.
Other People Are Reading
-
Salary
-
To qualify for exempt status, you must make at least $455 per week. To maintain your exempt status, you must be paid at least this wage rate even if you work less than 40 hours, as long as you are ready, willing and able to work. Your employer cannot change your pay rate, or deduct wages from your salary if he did not have enough work for you to do, or there was a weather or otherwise unforeseeable emergency that caused your employer to shut down. Your wage cannot be reduced to the minimum $455 if your agreed upon salary is higher, simply because of a lack of work.
Deductions
-
Your employer is entitled to take the standard deductions from your check, such as taxes and insurance payments, but cannot dock you for being late, taking partial days off for parent-teacher conferences, personal business or minor illnesses, unless there is no bona-fide sick leave plan that provides compensation for salary lost due to illness. If you take a full day off because you ran out of sick time, you can be docked for the full day.
-
Deductions
-
If you are called to jury duty, your employer may offset your salary by the amount you are paid for jury duty, but may not deduct three days pay from your check due to your absence. If you violate a safety rule of major significance or you violated a work conduct rule, your employer may deduct the safety rule penalty or may give you an unpaid suspension for the work conduct rule violation, if imposed in good faith.
Penalty
-
If your employer improperly deducts wages from your check inadvertently, there is no penalty. However, if a pattern of behavior can be established, and if there is a clear and communicated policy prohibiting such deductions, the employer is subject to a penalty. If the deductions are deemed improper, all employees in the job classification of the employee whose pay was improperly deducted, who also work for the manager who authorized the improper deduction, revert to hourly status for that pay period and are entitled to overtime pay for those workweeks.
-
