Dive Brief:
- According to an article at SHRM.org, employers breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Department of Labor (DOL) issued its proposed overtime rule and announced it was not proposing specific regulatory changes to the duties tests for determining exempt employees. Not yet, anyway.
- Several employment law attorneys told SHRM that things could change as the DOL unveils its plans.
- The main fear is the DOL will change the duties test so that more employees would be classifed as non-exempt and eligible for overtime past 40 hours. With the OT change, the DOL raised the the "exempt" level from $23,660 to to $50,440 a year (the $23,660 figure had been in effect since 1975).
Dive Insight:
"The main takeaways as to the duties tests are that DOL remains very interested in making them harder to meet and employers should not assume that there will be another opportunity to comment upon changes in those tests,” John Thompson, an attorney with Fisher & Phillips in Atlanta, told SHRM.
Employers should still steel themselves for the possibility of a double whammy—an increase in the salary level and more stringent duties tests, said Alfred Robinson Jr., an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Washington, D.C., and a former acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
“Employers could have a final rule that includes both a markedly higher salary level and more stringent duties tests that limit the amount of nonexempt work that an exempt employee may perform, all of which may result in fewer exempt employees and may necessitate changes to their business models,” he added. On the other hand, the SHRM article also notes that the DOL may leave the duties tests alone. Time will tell.
