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Overtime laws hit workers in the wallet
by Johnny Whitfield, Wake Weekly Associate Editor
Beginning Monday, the town of Wake Forest found itself with eight fewer employees trying to juggle the demands of the timeclock.
New federal rules regarding overtime went into effect this week and for the town, it means some employees who have received overtime in the past no longer qualify. Town Manager Mark Williams said the town has tried to follow the mandates of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outline how overtime eligibility is calculated. Because of a 1985 California court case, local governments -- which had been exempt from overtime regulations -- are now required to abide by the rules of the law. "We try to follow the letter of the law as closely as we can, because we are spending the public's money and we want to be able to show that we are being good stewards of that money," Williams said. But Williams said the new rules don't require local governments to remove employees from overtime eligibility. "It's really just a minimum guideline. If a town wants to be more generous with its overtime pay than the rules call for, then they can," Williams said. The new rules, put into effect by executive order under President George W. Bush, make several significant changes to tests used to determine if a person is considered exempt or non-exempt. Exempt employees are not eligible for overtime pay, but non-exempt workers are. "Under the old rules one of the big tests was whether you supervised someone. That's no longer a part of the test and so we had some people who were one-person departments who qualified under the old rules because they didn't supervise people," Williams said. Those employees, include the town clerk, an inspections administrator, a customer service supervisor and the superintendent of the field operations division among others. Tammy Moody, Wake Forest's Director of Human Resources, said she hasn't yet figured the savings the town will see after eliminating the overtime pay for those eight employees. "Most of the positions listed did put in some amount of overtime," Moody said. At least one employee routinely put in between 10 and 20 hours of overtime each week. Overtime pay is one and a half times the employee's hourly rate. No town employees who were ineligible for overtime pay under the old rules became eligible under the new guidelines. The changes have caught some employees by surprise, Williams said. "We sat down with them and told them that if they didn't think we had come to the right conclusion they could appeal our decision," Williams said. None of the eight employees, who have known about the pending changes for several weeks, chose to appeal the decision. But Williams said the rules could change, especially if the White House changes hands in November. "It's possible that they could repeal the changes and we would go back to the way we did it before," Williams said. So far, none of the employees have gotten angry enough over the changes to quit, Williams said. The new rules don't impact Franklin County or Rolesville. "That's one headache I don't have to deal with," said Rolesville Town Manager Matt Livingston.
Last Updated On: August 26, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Wake Weekly