IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtime
My question involves employment and labor law for the state of: California
I am a contractor employed as a W-2 employee at a contract agency and assigned to a specific company. I can never work for another company through this agency - they only work with this specific company. I make an hourly rate of $40/hour. When my contract was presented to me, and what was approved by the company I am assigned to, showed an overtime rate of $60/hour. I signed this contract and began working, and had several paychecks where overtime was paid at time and a half.
Three months in, questions came up from my sponsor at my assigned company regarding my overtime rate. He stated that I should not be making an overtime rate, the contract agency had made a mistake, and that I was exempt because I am a "highly-compensated" worker. They stopped my overtime rate and retroactively took money away from my next paycheck that they had already paid me for overtime work, effectively paying me only my base rate for those hours.
My job duties include supporing the Windows servers at this company. I am purely involved in what's called "break/fix" where we only fix software and hardware problems that come up with the servers. I do not make any decisions independently, other than how I will fix a particular problem. I do not install servers. I am not involved in the design or implementation of servers, software, or any other infrastructure. I do not make recomendations to management. I do, however, support servers that are critical to management and the operations of the business. (Let me know if you need more detail about what I do). My title is Systems Administrator.
So, based on this information, am I exempt or not?
Thanks in advance!
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
Quote:
When my contract was presented to me, and what was approved by the company I am assigned to, showed an overtime rate of $60/hour. I signed this contract and began working, and had several paychecks where overtime was paid at time and a half.
If you have an actual contract, exempt or non-exempt is irrelevant. The contract rules.
What you are paid is none of the client companies business. Your employer (the contract agency) is who is liable to you for your contracted pay. Anything involving the client company is between your employer and the client company.
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
Get an attorney to read the contract. No one on this website can give you an informed opinion on a contract we have not read in it's entirity.
Past that, all employees are subject to paid overtime UNLESS one of the 100 or FLSA exceptions are in play. If FLSA considers you to be non-exempt, it is not possible for a contract to change your status to Exempt.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/complian...e_computer.htm
Take a hard look at the following:
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
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Quoting
DAWW
Get an attorney to read the contract. No one on this website can give you an informed opinion on a contract we have not read in it's entirity.
Past that, all employees are subject to paid overtime UNLESS one of the 100 or FLSA exceptions are in play. If FLSA considers you to be non-exempt, it is not possible for a contract to change your status to Exempt.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/complian...e_computer.htm
Take a hard look at the following:
care to show where what you are referring to is?
beyond that, in this situation, it would be irrelevant, regardless of what you find on that site since his contract provided FOR overtime. That means whether he is exempt or non-exempt, he would be due overtime as long as the claim in the contract bears out to be enforceable. Now, if the contract denied overtime, then whatever you have on that site would be relevant.
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
what your company charges their client is none of your affair. i know when i had temp employees we would pay 135-150% of what the employee got. so i can see why they are complaining...but that's not your concern. you still work for your company. maybe they'll hire you full time ..
they seem to be happy with your work or they would dump you ...
ask about full time employment
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
IT Sysadmins are exempt if they spend most of their worktime doing IT sysadmin work.
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
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Quoting
eerelations
IT Sysadmins are exempt if they spend most of their worktime doing IT sysadmin work.
true but if there is a contract stating they are to receive premium pay for hours beyond 40 per week, then the contract will rule.
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
Yes I know this, I was responding to DAWW's reco that OP read up on exempt/non-exempt definitions that this isn't necessary in this situation.
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
Quote:
Quoting
eerelations
Yes I know this, I was responding to DAWW's reco that OP read up on exempt/non-exempt definitions that this isn't necessary in this situation.
fair enough.:cool:
Re: IT Systems Administrator Retroactively Declared Exempt and Ineligible for Overtim
Thanks for all of the replies. It is actually more complicated than my OP. They messed up my contract in the first place and called me a "Database Administrator." My actual contract specifies the $40/hour but does not talk about overtime rate, nor does it talk about my job description or my exemption status. In CA, they provide a "New Employee Wage Notice" form. My original form lists the base rate, the overtime rate, and the title of "Database Administrator." They also provided a job description for "Database Administrator" and it begins "A non-exempt position" that blah, blah, blah... So there are multiple problems here. The New Employee Wage Notice is not binding. The actual contract (which I'm not entirely certain is an actual contract), doesn't give any more information than title and base rate, doesn't even discuss OT or my classification or exemption status. They also provided me a new "Wage Notice" which shows n/a for the Overtime rate after my assigned company told them I should be exempt. But they did not update my job title nor my job description. I have yet to see an actual job description.
Furthermore, I am a systems administrator but I am completely silo'd in an operations role. Again, I do not install/implement/design or make decisions in any way. I have been a sys admin for most of my career, and in those roles I did all of that. In this role, I am really operations support and that's it. I can't see how I could be considered exempt, other than the fact that I fix servers that are considered critical to business operations. I will see if I can redact the pertinent information on the wage notice and contract and post those here. I have already called my contracting agency and discussed the situation with them. They have to go back through another contract agency to "fight for me" in their words. This seems strange to me - they want me to email all these details to them, along with links to CA law sites that they can read (they are based in Michigan). I think they need to get their corporate counsel on it - wouldn't that be in their (and my) best interest?
Lastly, I'm one of about 12 females in this industry, so you can call me she. ;)
Thanks again!