To qualify for exemption, employees must generally be paid on a salary basis at a level of not less than $684/ week ($35,568 annually). Further, the employee’s duties must satisfy certain requirements: • For example, to qualify for the executive exemption, an employee’s primary duty must be managing the enterprise or managing a customarily recognized department or subdivision of the enterprise; the employee must customarily and regularly direct the work of at least two full-time employees or their equivalent; and the employee must have the authority to hire or fire employees, or the employee’s suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, advancement, promotion or any other change of status of employees must be given particular weight. • To qualify for the administrative exemption, an employee’s primary duty must be the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers, and the employee’s primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. • To qualify for the learned professional exemption, an employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment; the advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning (e.g., law, medicine, engineering); and the advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. Importantly, job titles do not determine exempt status. Instead, an analysis of Wage and Hour Audit Are Your Mortgage Loan Officers Correctly Classified? By JULIE A. MOORE, ESQ. Partner, Bowles Rice LLP If you are an employer in the banking industry, chances are you employ one or more employees in the role of mortgage loan officer (MLO). If so, read on to ensure that such employees are properly classified for purposes of wage and hour law. BASICS OF THE FLSA Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which is the federal wage and hour law, employees must be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and, with respect to hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek, employees must be paid overtime pay at a rate of one-and-one-half times their regular rate of pay. However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides exemptions from both minimum wage and overtime pay for workers employed in a bona fide executive, administrative or professional capacity. 14 WEST VIRGINIA BANKER
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