I work for a traffic engineering consultant as a Senior Designer. Our engineers are paid salary, but I am hourly. However, there is no official tracking mechanism of hours worked other than what I put down for a project. This time is billed directly to the client.

Here is the problem, I am very fast and proficient at what I do. In 4 hours I consistantly produce 12 to 16 hours worth of billable work. So my manager has me put on my time sheet what it would take anyone else to produce the equivalent amount of work. This is also so that it does not seem that we are charging our client $1,500 an hour. Our department is the only one in the company that is profitable and our projects are consistantly completed on time and under budget. The company is paid a flat contract fee, so the faster I am, the more money they make per project.
Due to my efficiency I end up with a substantial amount of down time due to the work being completed.
Our new controler wants to change everything and actually put me on a time card, and make it so that I can't work from home on days that I need to be home to take care of a disable child. The time card thing removes a certain amount of flexibility that the job has had for 5+ years. It also changes how the company has opporated for 15+ years in respect to my position.

I offered to become an Exempt employee and become salary instead of hourly. They said that being a CAD drafter, I am not eligible. According to what I have read, most of the engineers would be subject to the same terms.

Is there any loop holes or industry specific exemptions?

Thanks,
Ron

Most of my time, I try to prove people are non-exempt, so this is a bit novel. In any case, the engineers are exempt under the Professional Exemption. If you are a licensed or certified engineer, you would also likely qualify as being exempt. The best way to do this is to take the Engineer in Training exam and become certified as an EIT. You did not say what state this is in, but in California, that would be sufficient to exempt you, provided that they did indeed pay you a salary at least 2x the minimum wage.

However, even if you DO qualify as an exempt employee, the employer does not legally have to treat you as such. If they choose to continue to treat you as a nonexempt employee, they may.

Thanks for the reply.
However, the law that keeps me from being an exempt employee specifically states that engineers doing the same work are also to be non-exempt. It has to do with the use of Auto Cad and computer software as a primary tool for the job.

Ron

Someone else asked me this same questions just a couple of weeks ago. Your employer is confused about how the exemptions work.

There is an exemption called the Computer Professional Exemption. It says that the exemption will not apply if the "employee is an engineer, drafter, machinist, or other professional whose work is highly dependent upon or facilitated by the use of computers and computer software programs and who is skilled in computer-aided design software, including CAD/CAM, but who is not in a computer systems analysis or programming occupation."

If you are an engineer and you work primarily with CAD/CAM, you will not be exempt under the Computer Professional Exemption. However, you can still be exempt under the Professional Exemption. People read the language and think that it means that they are "non-exempt." All it says, if you read it, is that you are not exempt under the Computer Professional Exemption. It does NOT say that you are non-exempt. You can still be exempt under the Professional Exemption (or any other exemption, if applicable).

The difference is that the Computer Professional Exemption allows an hourly rate to be paid, while the Professional requires that a salary be paid. Thus, if you are an Engineer paid on a hourly basis, you can not be exempt under the Professional Exemption and you can not be exempt under the Computer Professional Exemption. However, if you are an Engineer paid on a salary, you can not be exempt under the Computer Professional Exemption, but you can be exempt under the Professional Exemption.

I hope the above clears up the issue for you.