I'm a software support engineer, and I sometimes have to work on the weekends and extra hours in the evenings. Now, I and my department are based in Colorado, but the company is based out of another state, but I'm guessing that it's wherever I pay state taxes that matters.

Anyway, somebody brought this to my attention:
Computer professionals: Section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provides that certain computer professionals paid at least $27.63 per hour are exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA.

I don't make that much. I mean, I'm taking my annual gross salary and dividing it by 52 40-hour weeks. Maybe that's the wrong calculation, but even if I take out the vacation weeks and sick days, I'm still not hitting that much (57,470.40). I'm also not sure of what the FLSA definition of Computer Professional is, but that doesn't seem to really matter considering the salary issue.

So, basically, my question is: am I supposed to be getting paid time and half, somehow?:confused:

After digging around, I think I get it... The FLSA only applies to State employees, which I am not.

I'm still curious. According to the DOL site, I'm guessing that I qualify for exemption as a "professional"

PROFESSIONAL:
A salaried individual, earning in excess of the minimum wage for all hours worked in a
workweek, employed in a field of endeavor who has knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study. The professional employee must be employed in the field in which they are trained to be considered a professional employee.

That's vague. Isn't it pretty easy for an employer to just tag anybody with proprietary knowledge of their software to be considered "specialized?" That's all I do. I mean, I don't have any education past high school, except for what I learned on the job (basically, we do security software and hardware, and I've done stuff like that before). Now, sometimes that calls for some scripting stuff in unix, but I'm not a programmer, or a hardware engineer, or anything like that.

So, I'm still curious. Opinions?

After digging around, I think I get it... The FLSA only applies to State employees, which I am not.



No, the FLSA applies to all subject employers, not just employees of states.

The hourly rate to which you refer ONLY applies IF you qualify under the Computer Professional exemption AND you are paid on an hourly basis. If you are paid on a SALARIED basis, the minimum is $455 per week.

Here's a DOL opinion letter regarding the exempt/nonexempt issue which may be on point in your situation.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/opinion/FLSA/2006/2006_10_26_42_FLSA.pdf

Wow. Thank you. That letter was very heavy, but explained things perfectly.

I don't qualify as exempt. The primary focus of my job is mostly analyzing data, solving problems as laid out in the manual, some training of customers, installing patches and replacing hardware.

Now, I gotta figure out how to go about letting my supervisor know.

Thanks again

D