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Q: MY employer pays me a monthly salary of $3,000. I am supposed to work 8 hours per day, five days a week. However, because there’s so much to do, I am usually putting in 9 to 10 hours per day. I often work on Saturdays too. My total hours per week would usually run from 50 to 60 hours. I am told that I am not entitled to overtime because I receive a salary and I am, therefore, exempt. Is this correct?
A: Not necessarily. You are entitled to overtime pay if you are not employed in an executive, administrative, or professional capacity. Only these job functions are truly exempt from California’s overtime laws.
The law strictly applies the "executive," "managerial," and "professional" exemptions. An employee’s true exempt status is not determined by fancy titles. Neither is an employer’s arbitrary categorization of the employee as exempt legally binding. True exempt status is determined primarily by an employee’s duties.
Executives or managers must perform managerial, not merely ministerial, duties. These duties include managing the business, hiring, firing, and disciplining employees, deciding on employee salaries and wages, and creating work policies and procedures. Simply issuing memos on work policies and procedures when these policies actually come from upper management is not enough.
Additional managerial or executive duties include:
a) planning the work;
b) determining the techniques to be used (to perform the work);
c) apportioning work among the workers;
d) directing work;
e) appraising work and efficiency for the purpose of recommending promotions or other changes in employee status;
f) handling workers’ complaints and grievances and disciplining them where necessary;
g) controlling the flow and distribution of materials or merchandise and supplies; and
h) providing for the safety of the workers and the employer’s property.
An employee, to be truly exempt from overtime, must not only perform these managerial duties. These duties must take up more than 50% of their work time. If, for example, managers work 10-hour days, they must spend more than 5 hours per day on managerial work.
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