FLSA/Computer Professionals

K R C

Does anyone know why there is such a huge difference between the salary miniumum and the hourly minimum requirement for Computer Professional exemption under FLSA? The salary minimum is $455 per week, which figures out to about $11.38 an hour. If the employee is paid on an hourly basis, then the minimum is $27.63.

atrimble

I think it has to do with the nature of the work. IT professionals frequently have lots of down time between "jobs" (depending on what they actually do). If an employer is willing to pay them a salary regardless of how many hours are logged (lots or little), then the employer gets a break. But if the employer is going to calculate wages by the hour (of work actually performed), then the ER gets ding'd a bit. Tracking up time and down time can be very tricky in the computer business. I'm specifically thinking of on-call responders who may be called out in a catastrophic failure situation and work under tremendous pressure for days on end (think Katrina), or help desk folks that take a five minute call once every 38 minutes...

I honestly don't understand why this exemption is even in existance. I mean, it all can be covered by learned professional...! Unless the DoL is out to get IT folks - I mean, pay me $28 an hour and then don't give me overtime when I have to work 29 hours straight to bring a bank's network back into operation?!