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Greetings SpiceHeads,

I’ve been working as an IT Professional for over 20 years and have been exempt/salaried the entire time. Today I was told that because of the new Department of Labor rules I will now be moved to non-exempt and will be paid hourly. And by the way, your lunch hour is now only 30 minute and you must clock out and back in for lunch.

Just wondering if there are other IT Professionals out there that are non-exempt and being paid hourly.

Bob

Exempt or Non-exempt IT Professionsls
  • Exempt/Salaried
  • Non-exempt/Hourly
0 voters
15 Spice ups
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There is more to being exempt than simply being declared thus, as many I’m sure will share with you. Basically, you need to “be in charge” of something and someone.

1 Spice up
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There’s definitely more to it than just being in charge.

I think developers are listed as except… I’ve never understood why IT personal where considered salary/ exempt instead of salary/non exempt (or gets overtime). We aren’t devs and aren’t in charge.
I’m guessing someone decided that we work to many OT hours and they were trying to find a way to pay us less.

1 Spice up
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I have been non-exempt and hourly for most of my career. I was recently moved to salaried along with a title and job-responsibility change, but am still legally non-exempt under FLSA rules. This is one of the biggest misconceptions around here and elsewhere, that “salaried” automatically equals FLSA-exempt (it does not).

I qualify for actual OT pay, although I’m “encouraged” to manage my time in other ways or granted comp time (1.5) in lieu if I can’t take the equivalent balance off during the same week.

I don’t manage people as part of my daily work, but I do oversee many mission-critical systems and processes. I also participate in organizational IT strategic planning, and am authorized to take the reins to manage procurement, personnel, and scheduling on a per-project basis. I’m part of my IT group’s decision making “core” and mentor and guide our junior techs (our boss is still the manager in that regard, as he prefers a flatter org-chart anyway).

But I’m still FLSA-non-exempt while being salaried.

1 Spice up
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The change at my place of work has to to with the new rules for salaried workers making less that $47,476.00/yr. They would have had to increase my salary in order to bring me up to that amount. Instead they switched me to hourly so they would not have to increase my pay. That the loophole. Because they can switch me from salary to hourly they in effect are not affected by the new Department of Labor rules.

And I’m not allowed to work overtime. Typically I have been working an hour or two in the evenings to perform maintenance on servers and desktop. Not doing that anymore.

6

Personally, I am hourly, which I prefer (I’m in the office right now in advance of a 3 hour migration at 00:00 EDT following my regular shift). In Ontario, most IT workers are exempt from overtime, which is a double-edged sword… on the one hand, I’m exempt from law saying I can work max 11 hour workdays, on the other hand, I don’t get OT pay.

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i think this dude is pretty up to speed on some of the new labor laws.

@johnnicholson

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Personally, the only time I’ve been exempt is when I was in sales, base plus commission.

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So even though you were salaried, they paid you for overtime?

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We went though this change a few years back. Many co-workers were made hourly. Now it is only four members of management, and me who are exempt. I still get to work overtime for free. Yippie!

It doesn’t bother me too much. I would really hate having to punch a clock and accounting for my time without the flexibility I have as an exempt.

1 Spice up
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The thing is that being salaried/exempt historically has come with flexibility of schedule. Unfortunately in IT when you work a few 12 hour days and come in late/leave early/take a day off stuff still happens and users assume you’re slacking because their tickets aren’t being immediately answered and they weren’t around when you were applying patches all night…so they assume.

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Do you make less than 47K? 98% of the exemptions from paying overtime are going away for people in this segment of income from IT. (Only major one of note is gov can do comp time).

Even if you make more than 47K there’s still a duties test and up to 134K if your doing things like helpdesk and end user support primarily then you should be non-exempt.

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That’s not a loophole, that’s fully allowed! In fact they could even LOWER your pay and then give you an expectation of working 45 hours where the 5 hours of overtime ends up causing you to make the same as before. This ruling though is still good in that.

  1. It makes it VERY transparent what the actual pay is. I have a family member who’s worked a lot of jobs that range from 20 hours, to 100 hours (She joined the Circus) in a week. It’s incredibly hard to compare jobs if the expectations are not communicated up front and many people find themselves slowly making less per hour as the expectations go up.

  2. Many companies where giving out titles that didn’t match job descriptions to avoid overtime. That is coming to an end.

1 Spice up
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COMP time can only be used in lieu of pay in the same workweek, OR if you are working for government. A LOT of companies would abuse this (Shift overtime from one week to the next in a pay period).

Even if the primary duties test is triggered and your making over 47K, there’s nothing stopping your employer from paying overtime. Companies that offer better pay and benefits retain better workers. One of the best things for a company to do is be transparent about pay and hours and promising overtime pay regardless is the best way to do that.

1 Spice up
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For those curious, here is a link to the US Dept. of Labor’s Computer-Related Occupations requirements for the exempt test: Fact Sheet #17E:Exemption for Employees in Computer-Related Occupations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) | U.S. Department of Labor

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We have a sticky about the changes in the law here over in the Jobs Forum.

1 Spice up
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My employer is pretty above-board on all of this (as I’ve said numerous times elsewhere, I work for a public K-12 who treats us very well, with an administration and management structure that respects us), so even if I get the terminology wrong, they’ll do right by me on my behalf. :slight_smile:

My point (and again, I admit that I may have the concept/terms incorrect) is that because of our department budget, we have a handshake agreement to not abuse the OT pay availability and take comp time instead*. The beginning of the school year is unavoidable (usually late August through early October), so we make a metric crap ton of money in our paychecks.

Problem being that we’re too damn exhausted to enjoy it! :wink:

This month so far, I’ve had to babysit some vendors who had to come after hours to not interrupt class times, so I’ve recorded quite a bit of hours beyond the 40 hour week. My department secretary gave me the official spreadsheet to track my OT hours, so again, I trust my district to record it all and compensate me correctly.

But either way, I’m considered salaried but FLSA-non-exempt, so I can’t even fill out the OP’s poll above.

  • we the staff agreed to this; it wasn’t a “you’ll take it and you’ll like it” situation. We’d rather do our part to keep the department’s and district’s budget manageable, no matter how small.
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So since I got curious, I went looking up the DOL’s tests and standards, and I think I’m kinda’ in that grey area between exempt & non-exempt due to the recent promotion and transition, as we begin hiring new people to take more of my and my colleague’s user-facing troubleshooting work (the daily help desk ticket stuff).

I exceed both the current and new wage threshold, and am salaried. The “systems analysis” as defined by DOL seems a bit vague to me (maybe just my interpretation). My boss and HR approved my job description, and based on what I actually do, it seems like my job fits into this category, which by rights should mean that I’d be considered “exempt,” but my district doesn’t seem to think so (which of course benefits me more).

Right now, I’m still primarily out in the wild, taking care of users’ workstations and classroom systems, so that apparently puts me in non-exempt because of job duty. But that wasn’t included in the official job description, so … ???

(I’m only doing it because of the transition that we’re going through right now and, until this coming Monday when our new guys start, we didn’t have enough bodies)

19

You want to check out the UK’s IR35 rule, here’s a calculator to help you work out how crap this rule is.

http://www.contractoruk.com/calculators/ir35_tax_calculator.html

THe thing is, basically you are self employed, you cannot behave or act like an employee. You can’t receive paid for training or company peks such as discounts. Basically, you are not an emploee, you are not employed by a company, you can’t have those perk.

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I say screw them! If this is how they plan on treating you, they will have to find door mats to run IT. When that happens, the quality of work will go down. It won’t happen right away but in the end they will pay for it.