A wholesale supplier of plumbing and heating products must pay overtime to its inside sales representatives, notwithstanding the company’s contention that they fell within the Fair Labor Standard Act’s exemption for “administrative” employees, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled in granting summary judgment.
In an enforcement action filed in July 2020, U.S. Department of Labor Acting Secretary Julie A. Su alleged that defendant F.W. Webb Co. violated the FLSA by: (1) misclassifying inside sales representatives as administratively exempt from overtime pay; (2) failing to maintain records of the hours worked by non-exempt employees; and (3) retaliating against employees by dissuading them from speaking freely to DOL investigators.
On June 16, Judge Angel Kelley granted the acting secretary’s motion for partial summary judgment on her misclassification and record-keeping claims, finding Webb violated the FLSA by failing to pay its inside sales reps — or ISRs — for all overtime hours worked from Aug. 4, 2018, to present.
Regarding misclassification, the judge rejected the defendant’s argument that the company’s ISRs performed work “directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers” as required under the three-part test provided in DOL regulations for the administrative exemption to apply.
Instead, she concluded that the evidence clearly showed the ISRs’ primary duty was to make sales.
“The company generates its...
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