Posted on 15-Dec-09 by The Timekeeper

And I thought wage and hour for restaurants was confusing! Seems there’s a “commissioned sales person exemption” in the FLSA… and apparently this provision is widely misunderstood among employers — as 11 auto dealerships in Florida discovered to their chagrin recently.

The dealerships were assessed over $71,000 in back wages (hard news to hear in today’s economy, I would think) for failure to pay salespeople the federal minimum wage and/or failure to pay overtime when required.

I’m guessing they thought their payroll policies were acceptable under the commissioned sales persons’ exemption, but evidently they had misunderstood some key provisions. For instance, as long as they’re working during a given work week, employees have to be paid at least minimum wage whether they make a sale that week or not. And unless they meet certain specific thresholds, they are eligible for overtime pay. (Some folks evidently think all commissioned sales people are automatically exempt from overtime rules. This is not the case.)

If you have sales people who work on commission, you might want to take a look at the full article and have a chat with your employment lawyer to make sure you aren’t suffering from the same misunderstandings.

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