Exempt Employees in California and the FLSA

Exempt employees do not have to be paid overtime. In order for an employee to be classified as exempt, the employee must be employed in a professional, administrative or executive capacity. The FLSA requirements include three conditions that must be met in order for an employee to be properly classified as exempt:

• First, the employee's salary must be a minimum of $455 per week.
• Second, the employee must be doing office work or other non-manual work, and the work has to directly assist with servicing or running the employer's business.
• Third, the employee has to be given leeway to exercise independent judgment.

Meeting the last condition means that the employee can choose among various possible ways to do the job after evaluating different options. The employee, thus, has discretion to act without being given specific directions as to exactly what to do in every work situation.

Violating Non-Exempt Employee Rules

Employers often try to avoid paying overtime by misclassifying workers as exempt when they are actually non-exempt. To do so is a violation of FLSA requirements.Workers who believe they ought to have received overtime pay have some options for a claim against the employer. Employers must prove their classifications are accurate and can be required to pay back wages and penalties, along with attorney's fees, if they have wrongfully classified non-exempt employees as exempt. The Department of Labor may recover the unpaid back overtime wages through a direct administrative action. Employees may also sue the employer in court for back wages.

Besides having to pay the overtime wages illegally withheld from misclassified employees, employers who falsely classified non-exempt workers as exempt can be penalized up to $1,100 for each repeated incident.