Salaried jobs are exempt jobs for the most part. Exemptions from the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act).
These exemptions are for the employer and not the employee.
What it means is that the employee is exempt from the overtime provision and that the employer can ask them to work as many hours as they wish and they do not have to pay overtime.
The difference between exempt (salaried) and non -exempt (hourly) is that hourly is paid for each hour they work and salaried is paid a salary to do the job and hours no longer count .
There are strict standards set up by the FLSA which must be adhered to concerning the classification of exempt and non exempt. The Human Resources Department must determine by applying the rules given to them if the job is exempt or non exempt. If a mistake is made in exempting a person that should not be exempt there are penalties and they may have to go back and pay that person overtime for the whole time they were misclassified as exempt.
Because of this Human Resources is very careful about making any employee exempt. If they are on the edge or if they don't quite meet the qualifications they will leave them hourly simply to make sure they are in compliance with the FLSA.
There is no penalty to make an exempt person hourly, if they want everyone hourly and non exempt they can do so, it just means they have to pay overtime.
You can find the rules for the FLSA exemptions non the DOL (Department of Labor) website. For each of the exemptions all of the conditions must be met not just one or two of them. That is the hardest part.
Go to this website and check out the exemption rules to see if your job could be made exempt. If indeed it meets all the rules for one of the FLSA exemptions and you truly want to give up your overtime and go salaried, than take the rules in to HR and talk to them about classifying your job as exempt. If they say no ask them to explain why not and what you can do to change the classification. More than likely they will be able to tell you what the job needs to be in order for them to reclassify it as exempt.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/complian...a_overview.pdf
Above is the department of labor site where you can find the regulations for employers for the FLSA exemptions to the Act.
The categories for exemption are:
Executive
Administrative
Professional
Computer
Outside Sales
These are the only ones allowed and each term under each exemption rule must be met.
There is a dicussion on this site which might help you also between exempt and non exempt, it is an FLSA legal site at FLSA.com.
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Coverage (Exempt vs. Non-Exempt -- The Online Wages, Hours and Overtime Pay Resource
The big one that gets some employers in trouble is the exercise of independent judgment and discretion about matters of significance.
This means the employee can make decisions without asking others on his own. That means they must have the authority to do so. It must be decisions on matters of significance such as budge, hiring..something larger than what paper to use.
I wish you luck
Shirley
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