In a BLR webinar titled "Exempt or Nonexempt? How To Avoid the Misclassification Mistakes You Simply Can't Afford To Make," Joseph K. Mulherin, Esq., cautioned employers against assuming that the administrative exemption applies to all white-collar employees that do not fit under any other exemption.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have made a concerted effort, with some success, in limiting the "administrative" exemption to the narrow group of employees working in the functional areas listed in the regulations.

Those functional areas are: tax; finance; accounting; budgeting; auditing; insurance; quality control; purchasing; advertising; marketing; research; safety and health; personnel management; human resources and benefits; labor relations; public and governmental relations; network, Internet, and database administration; and legal and regulatory compliance.

Plaintiffs' attorneys argue that if an organization's business offering to the public is in one of those functional areas, then any employee engaging in that function is a "production" employee and cannot be "administrative."

By way of example, a federal court in California recently certified a class action filed by a group of staff accountants who assert they are owed overtime compensation because their jobs do not require a CPA (certified public accountant) license and they are not given the level of independent discretion in decision-making that is required to properly classify an employee as exempt.

Joseph K. Mulherin, Esq., is a senior associate in the Labor and Employment Practice Area at Vedder Price PC. Based out of the firm's Chicago office, he counsels and represents public- and private-sector employers nationwide in a variety of traditional labor and employment law matters. Mulherin has significant experience with wage and hour matters, having counseled clients on a multitude of issues and successfully litigated numerous single-plaintiff cases and large class actions. He can be contacted at jmulherin@vedderprice.com.