I work for a county government and have been treated as an exempt employee. On average my group works more than 40 hours a week and we must keep track of our hours worked. I earn a monthly salary based on roughly $30 per hour. There is a rumor that the law was changed in our state and we must earn at least $36 per hour to be considered exempt.

Is the salary rule necessary in order to claim the exemption or is it just one of many tests that needs to be met?

What are your job duties?

I do not supervise anyone, but it is considered a supervisory position. I also am on-call, which means that I am on a list that the answering service uses to reach someone in case a system is down. This is what causes the overtime, because occaisionally I do have to work outside of my normal "8-5" shift.

This is from the job posting:
To plan and implement overall strategic goals of the County’s server systems, carry out assigned server tasks, and perform scheduled maintenance on the servers. Performs system hardware and software installations, updates, monitoring and diagnosis.

Duties:
Installs new software releases, system upgrades, evaluation and installs patches and resolves software related problems; provide on-going support of systems that ensures the clients’ business cycles will not be impacted during upgrades or maintenance; perform system hardware and software installations, updates, modifications, monitoring, and diagnosis and problem resolution; assist supervisor with prioritization of work requests, communicating impacts to schedule and costs when exceptions occur; assist with the design, development, implementation, and analysis of products and systems; optimizes and tunes server OS performance; documents system configurations; implements enterprise-wide configuration changes; maintains server and network security; prioritizes, coordinates and delivers special technology projects; writes, revises, tests, documents and implements server-based procedures as required; diagnoses and resolves server problems; works in a proactive manner to alleviate potential problems and optimizes "up-time"; recognize the sensitive nature of the client’s information and protect it under the associated laws and regulations of it’s data type; monitor system logs, performance issues, and disk space.

Perform related duties as assigned. (Essential duties may vary from position to position within this classification. Reasonable accommodation will be made when requested and determined by the County to be appropriate under applicable law.)

We need more description of what you ACTUALLY do on a daily and weekly basis. For example, how much time do you spend on the descriptions of "plan and implement overall strategic goals of the County’s server systems?"
or "perform system hardware and software installations?"

A full description of what you ACTUALLY do on a daily and weekly basis is needed.

Also, you say you only "occasionally" work overtime. How often and how many hours of OT do you actually work?

You also state that your "group" works OT. Does everyone in your group have the same job title and perform the same functions?

J.E.B.

Do you know if the governmental employers are subject to the same Exempt rules as private sector? I have heard that there are some exceptions here, but have never heard this spelled out.

JEB,
It's difficult to answer your question in that context. Our group shares the same job title, but the responsiblities are different because there are I, II and III designations, yet all three ranges are labeled exempt by our HR department. The I's are responsible for the day-to-day operations, checking systems, installations, etc. The II"s become responsible for more of the implementation planning but are still responsible for the day-to-day operations. III's attend more meetings and are further responsible for the strategic planning, yet there are systems that they need to maintain. While all three have different responsiblities, they are pretty much interchangable. If there are absences, III's can fill in for I's and do. Would this mean that sometimes we're exempt and sometimes we're not?

As for the overtime issue, we are required to be placed on an on call list on which the names rotate weekly. Because we are considered exempt, they do not pay us a 15% salary differential for the 128 hours/week that we are considered oncall nor do they pay us overtime for the hours that we do wind up working while oncall.

I hope this answers your question. It is rather murky.

Aaaargh - Thanks DAW, I completely skipped past the "county employee" statement that Cal_IT made.

Cal_IT - are you employed directly by a county government? (Your paychecks are issued by the County?)

If so, the overtime exemption provisions of the California Wage Orders do not apply to you.

Dammit! So we'd need to look at Federal Statute? Can I get a quick lesson in Law 101 and why for a county government the more restrictive State law doesn't apply?