Non-Exempt Employee Rules

Identification

• A nonexempt employee can be hourly or salaried. However, most are hourly. This is because most salaried employees qualify as exempt under the FLSA. To obtain exempt status, an employee must perform the job duties specific to her occupation, and in most cases, pass a salary level test. White collar employees are generally exempt, and blue collar employees are usually nonexempt. Blue collar workers include manual laborers whose jobs requires them to use their hands often, such as office clerks, carpenters, electricians, craftsmen and construction workers. Firefighters, police officers and paramedics are also nonexempt.
  
  

Minimum Wage

• Nonexempt employees are entitled to at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, at the time of publication. The FLSA exempts some employees from its minimum wage provisions, such as casual babysitters, switchboard operators, federal criminal investigators, workers with disabilities, and executive, administrative and professional employees paid on a salary basis of at least $455 per week. An employer should check with its state department of labor for state minimum wage laws. The state might require a higher minimum wage for nonexempt employees than federal law. It might also have its own exempt requirements. For example, it might allow an employer to pay handicapped workers below the minimum wage if the employer obtains a certificate from the state department of labor; or it might require a different minimum weekly salary for executive, administrative and professional employees.
  
  

Overtime

• Under the FLSA, nonexempt employees who work more than 40 hours for the week are entitled to overtime pay at 1 1/2 times their regular pay rate; only the excess work hours are paid at the overtime rate. A salaried employee whose job duties does not qualify him for exempt status is nonexempt and should receive overtime pay, if he works such hours. The state might have overtime laws, which are different from federal law. For example, California nonexempt employees are entitled to overtime or double-time payment for work hours exceeding a certain amount for the day or for hours worked on the seventh consecutive day of the week.
  
  

Recordkeeping

• The FLSA requires an employer to maintain certain records for nonexempt employees, including the employee's full name, Social Security number, address, birth date if younger than 19, occupation, gender, timekeeping data, such as work hours for the day and week, hourly pay rate, daily or weekly regular wages, weekly overtime wages, total wages for the pay period, pay period start and end dates and the pay date. In many cases, the state has its own recordkeeping criteria and requires the employer to allow the employee to inspect her payroll records, or to make copies of such records available to the employee within a reasonable time frame upon receiving the request.