Exempt or Non-exempt?

[mike197]

Best I'm willing to do on that is, exempt is highly unlikely.

You folk really need to be talking to either an attorney or the DOL.

One more question.. Is a supervisor always exempt if he or she directs the work of other employees?

 

[cbg]

No. Not always.

 

[mike197]

A few of us have been mulling it over what to do. We were thinking that DOL may be a better course as they can come in and see what is really going on and it will be rectified for everyone. Not everyone is willing to go to lawyer as they are afraid to cause any waves. Figure resolution may be faster with dol than 2 or 3 years in court with a lawyer. Are we thinking correctly there?

 

[mike197]

No. Not always.

Company has more than 100 supervisors that are exempt salary. These supervisors really have no authority at all, they are just facilitators that assign union workers to a room to work and update the daily production report so the supervisor on the next shift can assign their workers to rooms. They are required to work 9 to 10 hours a day. These supervisors report to an assistant manager who reports to a manager who reports to a senior manager who reports to a department manager who reports to a plant manager who reports to an assistant plant superintentent who reports to a plant superintentent who reports to a director who reports to a senior director who reports to a vice president who reports to a senior vice president that reports to an executive vice president that reports to a senior executive vice president who reports to the president.

 

[cbg]

There really is no way for me to assess if they are correctly classified or not. If I had to guess I'd say not but without considerably more detail I'm not prepared to carve anything in stone.

 

[mike197]

If a person has an advanced degree and was hired in to do work that would use knowledge from that degree they would correctly classified as a professional as long as they met income requirements. But if this same person is used to operate equipment or do manual labor, does that defeat the exemption?

 

[justalayman]

mike197;3313706]If a person has an advanced degree and was hired in to do work that would use knowledge from that degree they would correctly classified as a professional as long as they met income requirements.

not necessarily true. It is the duties of the employee that allows for the determination.

But if this same person is used to operate equipment or do manual labor, does that defeat the exemption?

it would depend on how much of their job is doing any particular duty. If all they do is manual labor, it doesn't matter if they use knowledge gained as an astrophysicist, they are non-exempt.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17d_professional.pdf

Learned Professional Exemption
To qualify for the learned professional employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:
• The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not
less than $455 per week;
• 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.


Primary Duty
“Primary duty” means the principal, main, major or most important duty that the employee performs.
Determination of an employee’s primary duty must be based on all the facts in a particular case, with the major
emphasis on the character of the employee’s job as a whole.

 

[mike197]

not necessarily true. It is the duties of the employee that allows for the determination.

it would depend on how much of their job is doing any particular duty. If all they do is manual labor, it doesn't matter if they use knowledge gained as an astrophysicist, they are non-exempt.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17d_professional.pdf

Ok... Here is a scenario..

A person writes up a recipe to make a tablet batch (which can be done by someone without a pharmaceutics degree, but for this example lets just say the person has a MS in pharmaceutics). This takes about 2 hours to write up and is approved and signed by a higher level manager. Once recipe is signed off, person weighs out all of the materials, sets up all of the equipment (granulator drier, mill, blender, tablet press, coating pan), processes recipe on the equipment to make tablets. Tablets are given to a chemist to test. Person then cleans all of the equipment. The weighing, setting up, processing and cleaning takes about 3 days. This scenario is repeated over and over until chemist says recipe is good.

Is this person classified correctly as a professional?

 

[LdiJ]

Ok... Here is a scenario..

A person writes up a recipe to make a tablet batch (which can be done by someone without a pharmaceutics degree, but for this example lets just say the person has a MS in pharmaceutics). This takes about 2 hours to write up and is approved and signed by a higher level manager. Once recipe is signed off, person weighs out all of the materials, sets up all of the equipment (granulator drier, mill, blender, tablet press, coating pan), processes recipe on the equipment to make tablets. Tablets are given to a chemist to test. Person then cleans all of the equipment. The weighing, setting up, processing and cleaning takes about 3 days. This scenario is repeated over and over until chemist says recipe is good.

Is this person classified correctly as a professional?

I am not the person to answer your question, but I am going to ask you another question that I suspect that those in the know will need to know before answering you.

What do you mean by "writes up a recipe"? Are they inventing the recipe out of their own mind, or is it something else? There is a huge skill set difference in coming up with the recipe for a drug, and simply parroting something already developed, but maybe tweaking it to make it taste better. The people who know really would need to understand what goes into "writing up a recipe".

 

[justalayman]

. Person then cleans all of the equipment. The weighing, setting up, processing and cleaning takes about 3 days. This scenario is repeated over and over until chemist says recipe is good.

Is this person classified correctly as a professional?

what do they do the other 362 days of the year?

 

[cbg]

Rather than asking a message board, the person whose job this is should be contacting the DOL to ask if they are correctly classified or not. There is a limit to what a message board can do, and a message board has not regulatory authority. The DOL does, and frankly it sounds as if the DOL should have been in there long ago.

 

[mike197]

what do they do the other 362 days of the year?

This 3 day scenario is repeated over and over during the entire year.

 

[mike197]

What do you mean by "writes up a recipe"? Are they inventing the recipe out of their own mind, or is it something else? There is a huge skill set difference in coming up with the recipe for a drug, and simply parroting something already developed, but maybe tweaking it to make it taste better. The people who know really would need to understand what goes into "writing up a recipe".

No not novel inventing, but copying an approved drug around patents

 

[justalayman]

A person writes up a recipe to make a tablet batch (which can be done by someone without a pharmaceutics degree, but for this example lets just say the person has a MS in pharmaceutics). This takes about 2 hours to write up and is approved and signed by a higher level manager. Once recipe is signed off, person weighs out all of the materials, sets up all of the equipment (granulator drier, mill, blender, tablet press, coating pan), process

we're talking pharmaceuticals. They don't just write up recipes and start making pills. Meds have an extremely lengthy and expensive approval process required by the feds which takes place long before they start running product.

there is something very wrong with your scenario in my opinion.

 

[mike197]

we're talking pharmaceuticals. They don't just write up recipes and start making pills. Meds have an extremely lengthy and expensive approval process required by the feds which takes place long before they start running product.

there is something very wrong with your scenario in my opinion.

Let me elaborate a little more. In the scenario the person works on the research and development side, not commercial side of business. Making a novel drug and coping one are far from the same (copying is a lot easier). Once the chemist says the recipe is good (meaning the copied one works like the novel one), then it goes through dosing studies, regulatory agencies, filings and approvals.... and yes it is a long process. But all of that is not the worker in this scenario's job.