The United States Mint failed in a bid to dismiss a wage-hour class action brought by a group of supervisors who allege they were misclassified as exempt. The government had argued that the Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction.
The case was filed in March 2008. Seven supervisory police officers, stationed at different U.S. Mint facilities, sued, asserting they were neither “administrative” or “executive” employees and therefore they should receive overtime pay. They argued that they spent more than half of their time performing investigative work or protective duties. These kinds of job functions are, undisputedly, non-exempt duties. If this were proven at trial, the officers would have a good chance of recovery.
The employer would defend by contending that “management” remained the so-called “primary duty” of the officers, notwithstanding that they performed these other duties, even if they took up more than half of the work time. Under the FLSA regulations, “time alone” does not define whether someone is exempt or not. The crucial analysis is whether the employee retains managerial authority and exercises management authority.
These cases are extremely fact-sensitive. Some of the officers may be found to be exempt and others may not, depending how things shake out at trial. As an overall approach to defending the exemption in these close cases, an employer should delegate specific management functions, such as hiring and firing (the two most visible managerial duties) to the borderline employees and be prepared to show documented instances (e.g. notes of the supervisor taken during his interview of a potential employee) of the employee performing these (and/or other) managerial-supervisory duties.
The plaintiffs in this case are seeking $500,000 in damages.