I have blogged about and have long been concerned about working time issues and what constitutes compensable work hours. One of the thorniest of these issues is on-call time and when, if at all, on-call hours become working time. A recent case throws light on this issue, as a Court has held that an Admissions Director for a medical rehabilitation center may be eligible for overtime when she had to work more than forty hours in a week. The case is entitled Butler v. Ciena Health Care Mgt., Inc. and was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Michigan.

Although her title was “Director,” the employee may not have been an exempt employee, thereby making hours worked above forty to be overtime/compensable hours. The Court found that the employee might not have exercised independent judgment in the performance of her job. She “merely” followed admission guidelines and collected information that her boss then utilized to determine whether to admit a particular patient. In exemption issues, it is the duties performed, not the job title or the position description, that determines exempt status and whether someone is eligible for overtime.

The Court denied the defendant’s summary judgment motion and ordered a trial to determine if the employee was exempt. The Court, however, ruled that the worker was not entitled to compensation for the round-the-clock periods when she was required to be on call. The employee was on call twenty-four hours per day Monday-Friday and every other weekend. Workers will get paid for these on-call hours if they are impeded in the pursuit of their personal activities and personal pursuits.

This employee was home when she was on call and could not demonstrate that simply being in an on-call status had any “onerous impact” on her personal activities. The Court noted that the fact that a fraction of patient referrals came during non-work hours showed the Court that these interruptions were not burdensome.

The Takeaway

The great danger in a case like this is that if the employee is deemed non-exempt, so that overtime hours “matter,” the employer might face significant liability. The cure is to conduct an internal audit of all salaried positions, i.e. those normally classified as exempt and make pure up-and-down calls about exempt status.

Especially with the administrative exemption (as herein)…

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