Exempt On-Call troubles
mhblues
3 Posts
We are a small community mental health center in Washington State. As part of our responsibilities, we enforce the laws regarding involuntary detentions to state hospitals on a 24/7 basis. We have a Crisis Team of Masters level exempt employees whose primary function is to cover mental health crisis. Additionally, we have Master's level exempt employees that back-up the Crisis Team and cover shifts for vacation, sick leave and vacancies on an on-call & called-out basis in addition to regular therapist duties. We reimburse at $1.00 per hour for being on-call and $18.50 per hour for called-out for after office hour coverage. These duties are part of the regular therapists job duties and is included in their job descriptions. The problem is that the regular therapist are asking that they be paid full hourly wage for the time they cover shifts and that we are violating FLSA & L&I regulations by requiring them to work another persons job in addition to their own.
We maintain that providing coverage is part of the regular therapist duties and that even paying for the extra hours, like we do, is a benefit to them & not required under law. We do consider this a extremely important and valuable service to our community and center and realize the stress involved in providing these services.
We would appreciate any feedback or ideas on this problem.
Thanks
We maintain that providing coverage is part of the regular therapist duties and that even paying for the extra hours, like we do, is a benefit to them & not required under law. We do consider this a extremely important and valuable service to our community and center and realize the stress involved in providing these services.
We would appreciate any feedback or ideas on this problem.
Thanks
Comments
[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-19-03 AT 11:41 AM (CST)[/font]
Welcome MH blues! After working in MH for 20 years, I can understand the blues for sure! Am wondering if you could clarify your post a bit.
"The problem is that the regular therapist are asking that they be paid full hourly wage for the time they cover shifts" Are they wanting their full hourly wage for being on call or is there a difference between the 18.50 and what they make? When they are called in, is it putting them over 40 hours a week? If it is in their job descriptions, I don't agree with their arguement that you are having them do someone elses job. Unless I am not understanding, I would disagree with you in that you would be required to pay them for the extra hours.
Edit: Sorry, am now thinking you don't have to pay them the extra hours cuz they are exempt..Are you sure they are all properly classified? We leaned to the cautious but all of our CM and therapists were non exempt. Also disregard over 40 hours question, it is not relevant since they are exempt. Paying them by the hour is making them look non-exempt.
The key to this (as others have stated) is the classification as exempt or non-exempt. You need to carefully evaluate the job description to determine it's status.
In our case, we were able to determine exempt status and that made most of the problems go away. If they are not exempt, you have some real issues to go through. I think it is OK to have a different rate while being on-call, but I admit to being confused whether or not time and a half applies to it or not. I realize this answer could cripple your program and since it is that important, you should bring in legal counsel or hope that you can get Hatchetman to respond to your question.
Good luck.
We also have mobile responses team to handle psychiatric emergencies on a 24/7 basis.
Many years ago, the powers that be for my governmental jurisdiction decided that all emplyees who were represented by union contracts would be deemed non-exempt. This includes our nurses, psychologists and psychiatric (clincial social workers) all of whom are licensed by the state who serve ont he roll out teams.
We do pay them $1 to $2 per hour (depending on ther negotiated rate) for the "standyb or con call status (they are pretty much free to do what they want on their off hours and have either cell phones or pagers; we do pay them their regular hourly non-exempt rate with a guaranteed minimum of 4 hours pay if they are called out on their after-hours standby assignment. Of ocurse, overtime comes into play if more than 40 hours in a week occur (or more than 8 hours in day day, erhe in California.).
We do this even though all of the clinicians would clearly meet the exempt status as professionals.
Teh US DOL has taken the positon through its Opinion Letters that an emplyer may pay an expemt emplyee overtime. 29CFR541.118(b) allows for addtional compensation for the exempt for extra work. DOL's position is that this extra pay, if the emplyer wants to do it, can be on an hourly basis or a bonus basis; it can be paid at straight time or time and a half or any rate; it can even be done as comp time. The primary interest for DOL when this occurs is that this extra pay is not used to get around the salary requirements of 541.118(a) for the regular work and time spend doing it, the salary is suppose to compensate.