Various news items published last Friday afternoon intimated that a part of the 2012 federal omnibus appropriations law now exempts automobile-dealership service writers and similar employees* from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime requirements. Those reports appear to have been mistaken so far as we can tell, but the spending provision does contain at least some good news in this respect.

As we noted previously, in April the U.S. Labor Department decided against acknowledging the FLSA Section 13(b)(10)(A) overtime-exempt status of dealership employees doing the typical work of service writers, service advisors, etc. DOL thus revived its previously-disavowed interpretation that "[e]mployees variously described as service manager, service writer, service advisor, or service salesman who are not themselves primarily engaged in the work of a salesman, partsman, or mechanic as described above are not exempt under section 13(b)(10)." 29 C.F.R. § 779.372(c)(4)(emphasis added).