Sarah M. Block
Tue, 01/31/2023
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provides covered workers with a right to earn overtime compensation unless they satisfy one of a limited set of exemptions, including an exemption for “executive” employees who earn more than $684 a week. Whether an employee is properly exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA requires an analysis of the employee’s actual job duties and responsibilities. Notably, exemption status cannot be determined solely by an employee’s position description or position title.
As one court explained, relying on a job title as evidence that an employee engaged in particular job tasks “could encourage employers to develop creative job titles aimed at getting around the FLSA overtime requirement.” Bills v. Cactus Family Farms, LLC, 470 F. Supp. 3d 948 (N.D. Iowa 2020). Yet, this is exactly what employers do. Specifically, a recent study by researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of Texas at Dallas uncovered a rampant practice of so-called “title inflation” by employers, wherein employees were improperly assigned an invented, inflated job title intended to imply that the worker’s position was exempt from FLSA coverage. . For example, the study found that a carpet cleaner was called “Carpet Shampoo Manager” and a hotel desk receptionist was called a “Director of First Impressions” in order to trick those employees into thinking that they are properly exempt “managers” who are not entitled to overtime pay—even if they did not actually have any managerial duties or true supervisory authority. The study also revealed that this practice was utilized more frequently when an employee’s weekly salary fell just under the weekly dollar threshold to satisfy an exemption, and that that during 2010-2018, employers illegally avoided paying an astonishing sum of $4 billion to 73,000 workers through the use of title inflation.
Courts regularly reject the use of title inflation and employers’ attempt to rely on job titles to demonstrate entitlement to an FLSA exemption. In fact, MSE routinely brings suits to recover overtime compensation on behalf of wrongfully misclassified employees in both the public and private sectors and has recovered substantial sums in unpaid wages for these deserving workers.
For example, in the public sector, MSE recovered $7.8 million on behalf of 176 Fire Captains in Fairfax County, Virginia that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed had been unlawfully denied overtime compensation as the result of a misclassification, because first responders are not exempt from the FLSA’s overtime protections. See Morrison v. County of Fairfax, No. 1:14-cv-00005 (E.D. Va.). MSE also recovered $185,000 on behalf of Fire Captains and EMS Lieutenants in a similar misclassification lawsuit against the City of Eaton, Ohio. Similarly, MSE represented over 4,300 New York City Police Sergeants and successfully recovered $20 million on their behalf following a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that they had been wrongfully misclassified as exempt. See Mullins v. City of New York, No. 1:04-cv-2979 (S.D.N.Y.). In addition, MSE successfully represented Child Protective Specialists and Child Protective Specialist Supervisors in an overtime lawsuit against the City of New York and defeated a claim by the City that certain CPSS workers were not entitled to overtime because they were “executive” employees exempt from the FLSA; the case ultimately settled for $42.9 million in 2022.
MSE has also recovered significant amounts of unpaid overtime for wrongfully misclassified private sector workers in many different industries on a nationwide basis. For example, MSE recovered $2 million on behalf of a class of Staff Analysis, Facilities Planners, and Facilities Project Administrators in Washington State who alleged that Boeing wrongfully misclassified them as exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA as “administrative” employees. See Johnson v. The Boeing Company, No. 2:19-cv-00597 (W.D. Wash.). Similarly, MSE brought suit on behalf of 324 automotive mechanics and technicians nationwide alleging that Pep Boys improperly misclassified them as exempt from the FLSA as commission-based retail and service employees, despite the fact that they were not paid on a commission basis; the case ultimately settled for $1.825 million. See Wilks v. The Pep Boys, No. 3-02-0837 (M.D. Tenn.).
If you believe you have been wrongly misclassified as excluded from the overtime protections of the FLSA, please reach out to our firm today—either by phone at (202) 833-8855 or by email at info@mselaborlaw.com—to learn more about your rights.
