Farmers OT Lawsuit-California

HR Gal

I am located here in NV and was reading about the above suit which was won by the employees. I was also reading in the law letter that this type of class action lawsuit is very difficult to bring to Nevada since California has specific seperate state regulations with regards to the administrative overtime. I am seeking clarification as to why the OT provisions do not apply to Nevada or other states. Is California the only state that these OT provisions apply to?

Gillian

You need an attorney to answer the nitty gritty of this one, but here is my opinion in a general way. The exemption tests in California are different under our Wage Orders than under the Fair Labor Standards Act. There are a lot of similarities but some significant differences. One of the major differences is the requirement under both the Administrative and the Professional exemption that an employee exercise "discretion and independent judgement". That means freedom to make choices without immediate supervision with respect to matters of significance, or to make recommendations to supervisors as long as the recommendation affects matters of consequence. My take on this is that if the employee has a bunch of manuals to determine what should be done then they aren't using "discretion and independent judgement". Although the FLSA has some of this I think that the Ca. interpretation is stricter. The other major difference is the amount of non-exempt work that can be done and still maintain exempt status. The FLSA states that if an exempt employee does non-exempt work 20% of the time the employee remains exempt. Our level is more than 50% of the time so a bunch more people who do work that is a mixture of exempt and non-exempt are subject to being paid overtime. As to class action lawsuits I think that there are California laws in the area of fair business practices which prohibit unfair competition and that unfair wage practices (violating the Wage Orders) are being accepted as a violation of the business practice laws. This is where you need an attorney.