New Jersey Labor and Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Fox Rothschild LLP Law Firm : Serving Essex County, Sussex County, Roseland, New Jersey

A federal judge has ruled that a class of information technology workers in California was exempt from overtime and has granted the employer summary judgment on the overtime claims.  That this occurred in California is fairly significant as that State has been a breeding ground for numerous class actions, many of them involving computer workers.  What is even more significant is that the federal judge had conditionally certified this class in January as a proper class, but now, upon a motion to de-certify the class, changed her mind.

The workers were database administrators, programmers and analysts, who claimed that their work was primarily "production work" and thus did not qualify for either the executive or administrative exemptions.  The court disagreed, finding that they were not "merely" doing production work but performed operations and functions important to the business operations of the employer, Electronic Data Systems.

The plaintiffs also asserted that they were closely supervised and did not possess or exercise the independent judgment necessary to classify the work as exempt.  The judge agreed that the workers were supervised, but decided that their work did require the utilization of considerable independent judgment and discretion.

I wonder why defendants did not argue that the workers fell under the computer exemption as well.  Even if they were salaried, rather than hourly, these employees, if they performed the requisite computer duties called for by the exemption test, would have nevertheless fit within the administrative and/or professional exemptions.  In any case, it is reassuring to see a federal court delve into the details of the actual job duties of a group of workers, stack those duties up against the (still hard to interpret) regulations governing exemptions and reach a correct conclusion. 

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Workers have filed a serious class action against the cell phone division of AT&T.  The workers, who received overtime pay at first, have claimed that the Company's supervisors changed the data base so employees could not enter more than 40 hours of working time in a week.  Thus, these employees were doing productive work for the Employer, but were working "off the clock."  Naturally, part of the alleged scheme, according to plaintiffs, was that the Company was not keeping accurate records of time worked.

These are dangerous case for an employer, because intentionally telling workers to work off the clock or making it impossible for them to enter additional working time, evidences a willfulness that could easily garner an extra (third year) tacked onto the two-year statute of limitations. It also would mean that any damages secured would, in all likelihood, be doubled (i.e. liquidated damages).

The plaintiffs estimate that 100 people would be involved.  Given that these employees probably earned considerably more than minimum wage, the resulting damages would be geometric

In the industrial world, there is often a great deal of pressure placed on managers (i.e. first level, middle managers) to stay within labor budgets and keep overtime and other personnel costs down.  Maybe this is what gives rise to doing something like this, but there really is no reason to engage in this kind of behavior, for any employer.  There is no defense to the action.  If the  evidence shows that intentional steps were taken to keep employees from accurately recording their actual working time, it becomes almost impossible to maneuver and find a viable defense.

Long story short-don't do it!

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