Atlanta Employment Attorneys Handling Wage & Hour Collective and Class Actions

Overtime law states all employees who are not exempt from the FLSA must be paid at a rate of one and one half times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in any workweek. The most important issue in overtime law is whether or not the law applies to the type of work you do – whether or not you are exempt. If you make over a certain amount of money per week, and you perform a certain type of "white collar" work, then you are exempt from overtime. This means your employer need not pay you time and a half no matter how many hours you work in a week.

There are three principal exemptions under the FLSA: Executive, Administrative, and Professional. Employees fulfill these exemptions if they fit the salary basis test and the specific tests for each category. From the U.S. Department of Labor website:

Executive Exemption

• The employee’s primary duty must be managing the enterprise, or managing a customarily recognized department or subdivision of the enterprise;
• The employee must customarily and regularly direct the work of at least two or more other full-time employees or their equivalent; and
• The employee must have the authority to hire or fire other employees, or the employee’s suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, advancement, promotion or any other change of status of other employees must be given particular weight.

Administrative Exemption

• The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers; and
• The employee’s primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance.

Professional Exemption: Learned Professional

• The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment;
• The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning; and
• The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.

Professional Exemption: Creative Professional

• The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring invention, imagination, originality or talent in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor.

Additional exemptions may also apply for:

• Computer employees
• Outside sales employees
• Highly compensated employees
• First responders

There are a number of arcane overtime rules and broad exemptions that employers often rely on in an attempt to avoid paying overtime. As a result, unpaid overtime is one of the most frequent sources of employee complaints. Overtime class action cases are probably the fastest growing type of employment litigation in our federal court system.

Buckley Bala Wilson Mew LLP can assist you in a wide array of overtime collective action and class action claims.