Managers Exploited under California Labor Law

Santa Rosa: For the past 12 years Bill worked for a national retail chain; he was hired as assistant manager then promoted to manager after six months. But Bill says most of his work hours were spent performing hourly associate functions such as stocking shelves, operating a cash register, assisting customers on the floor and offloading freight trucks. Under California Labor Law Bill was classified as exempt, but that is still a very gray area…

The gray area lies here: What separates exempt from non-exempt seems to be the level of responsibility. "At times I did supervise staff," says Bill. "On any given workday, I spent one hour actually performing strictly management responsibilities such as planning and organizing activities and setting work schedules. And sometimes customers wanted to see the manager so I fulfilled that role. But in a 10-hour workday, definitely 8 hours were spent performing hourly worker's job duties, and nothing remotely managerial. Being on the floor and helping customers with questions could be classified as managerial but it amounted to about a 15-second conversation.

This is generally the basis of my overtime concern. On researching the California overtime law, if a worker spends more than 50 percent of their time performing hourly work duties, then they should be paid overtime. But the gray area is the level of responsibility that a general manager or store manager has??"it is basically just by title. In other words, this position, especially when it comes to retail, is classified as exempt based on job title rather than duties.

Here is another example: my store had to perform a timesheet audit for all the associates for an entire year. When my district manager assigned the task to me, he said it was because ' I was free labor.' I didn't say much because I didn't want to lose my job. But he said it in front of an assistant manager (I was the manager) and I didn't want to be insubordinate??"I just took it. I was so used to that type of environment--where we basically picked up any hours that were needed.

As a group of store managers, we discussed overtime compensation at district meetings but we were told 'That is just the way it is,' and the expectation is that we work a minimum of 50 hours per week. As general managers, we must meet certain goals and objectives to keep our jobs. The upper management gives us a payroll figure or percent that makes it extremely difficult to operate on a daily basis all the requirements that the company sets forth. So in order for us to meet those goals and objectives, store managers need to work excessive hours in order to keep their jobs.

And it is even more prevalent given this economic climate because payroll is the easiest expense to cut.

I calculated that if I were paid an hourly wage with overtime (time and a half after 8 hours) I would make a lot more than my salaried wage. It turned out to be in the six figures, substantially less than I was getting paid.

I have been talking to an attorney and he agrees with me that I certainly performed more hourly functions each day than managerial functions, but based upon present labor laws, by my title and in the course of the day that I performed supervisory functions, it would be difficult to win the case.

I know that assistant managers have been awarded back pay in overtime and are now paid hourly as opposed to salary. Store managers are still being exploited. The California labor laws would have to be changed, starting with state legislature. I think everyone agrees that it is an abuse, but with the present labor laws I couldn't win in a courtroom.

This incident has taught me to be cautious: if I take on another salaried position as manager, I would look more deeply at the store environment, my job duties and number of associates available to perform daily functions."