The guys close out the week by talking about Urban Outfitters asking salaried employees to volunteer their time on the weekend and how employers can get free work out of salaried employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, again, we’re joined with our fashion guru, our aficionado. Some would say an expert, others would say my co-host.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. I guess it’s kind of fashion-related, I suppose.
NASIR: It’s not? Oh.
MATT: I guess, as much as we’ll ever get into it.
NASIR: Well, I mean, no, you’re the expert. You tell me.
MATT: They do sell more than clothes at these places, I believe.
NASIR: Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff so, yeah, please, tell us.
MATT: Well, I haven’t been to one in a long time – Urban Outfitters – which I guess they also own Anthropologie and Free People. I feel like I’ve been to Anthropologie before. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Urban Outfitters, I don’t even know where they’re headquartered but this happened in Pennsylvania. Somebody sent an email out recently basically saying salaried employees were urged to work side by side with paid workers to pack and ship orders as a team-building activity. I was going to make it sound nicer than that but, I mean, it’s just kind of silly. The people are getting paid by the hour, okay, it makes sense for them. But what about these salaried employees who I’m assuming they aren’t working in the fulfilment center most of the time – or ever.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: These are people not even doing a job they normally do asked to volunteer and come in on the weekends – this weekend. Slightly better than being told they have to come.
Basically, what this amounts to is salary workers being asked to volunteer their time for free which could create a problem.
NASIR: But that is a little bit editorialized.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Because the company would probably say, “Okay, they’re not coming in to work for free. These salaried employees are coming in voluntarily to work on this particular day,” because they’re still getting paid, right? I mean, they’re paid a salary whether they work 50 hours or 40 hours, they get paid the same amount.
MATT: Right. And so, people, I think a lot of times people think that, once they’re paid a salary, that the exempt/non-exempt issue doesn’t come into play. I think that’s probably a pretty common thought, wouldn’t you say so?
NASIR: Oh, yeah, and people don’t even realize, you can actually be a salary non-exempt. It’s not common. I don’t know why some people do it but I don’t particularly like it. Yeah, salary non-exempt employee.
MATT: Yeah, what that means is you can still get paid a salary and still get overtime pay which is really the best of both worlds, I guess.
NASIR: Yeah. Really, it can be problematic. That often happens, okay, “Look, I’m just going to pay you X amount for 40 hours a week and that’s it,” and there’s no expectation of overtime. But then, there’s that occasional week or two that goes over 40 hours and you’re like, you kind of just brush it to the side but it ends up being a problem down the line.
MATT: Yeah, and you still have to pay. If that’s the case, you have to pay it out regardless of whether you told them to leave or not. You know, why is that not being brought up in this instance? And so, the exempt/non-exempt issue that we’re just talking about, amongst other requirements, there is a minimum salary threshold. In Pennsylvania where this was, it’s only $23,660 annually.
NASIR: Yeah, and that’s actually a federal minimum – or $23,660 or $23,600?
MATT: $23,660 is what I have here.
NASIR: I thought the federal is $600 and maybe Pennsylvania is $60.00 more? I don’t know.
MATT: Well, no, according to what I’m reading here which I think was pulled from the state website earlier, Pennsylvania maintains a test to determine exemption,
