Mario Gonzalez/ The Rider
By Monika Garza | THE RIDER
The new final rule on overtime, which will take effect Dec. 1 throughout the United States, will convert 450 exempt UTRGV employees to nonexempt, university officials say.
“There have been changes in the exemption rules for positions. The threshold for a nonexempt position is being raised … from $23,600 to $47,476 and so, jobs that are lower than that exemption threshold will have to be nonexempt if they are currently exempt,” said Michael James, UTRGV chief Human Resources officer.
Currently, UTRGV has 1,131 exempt employees and 942 nonexempt. When the final rule takes effect, the university is expecting 681 employees to remain exempt and 1,392 to become nonexempt, said Kristina Chavez, compensation manager for Human Resources.
The new overtime law updates the regulations for determining whether white-collar salaried employees are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime pay protections, according to the U. S. Labor Department website.
“Currently, if you are exempt, the way that you account for your time is that at the end of the month, you report the time that you are actually away from work,” James said. “If you are nonexempt, you have to report the hours that you work during a given week, so every week you have to report your actual hours of work.”
Chavez told The Rider discussions are being held regarding the salaries of those employees who will become nonexempt.
“We are still discussing something with individual division heads. The problem is, overall, the university is not able to adjust everybody’s salary because that would be a huge amount that could not be funded,” she said.
Chavez said employees who work more than 40 hours after Dec. 1 may be paid with compensatory time.
“If [employees] do work more than 40 hours, yes, it would be overtime. However, since we are [a higher education institution], we don’t have to pay this out; we can do comp time,” she said. “The recommendation [for individual supervisors] is going to be to do this through comp time.”
University Marketing and Communications Associate Vice President Patrick Gonzales said UTRGV supervisors were alerted two weeks ago on the new final rule on overtime through email.
“Supervisors were alerted last week by HR. … However, I am not sure when the [UTRGV] employees will be alerted,” Gonzales told The Rider in an interview last Wednesday.
James said the new final rule on overtime will impact UTRGV exempt employees.
“Right now, [UTRGV has] 170 job titles that will have some sort of exemption status change and so it’s going to have quite a bit of an impact on us,” he said.
James said UTRGV will manage employees hour for hour after the final rule takes effect.
“If they are currently exempt, we are not reporting hour for hour and we are going to now have to report their time hour for hour,” he said. “It’s going to have a bigger impact on those [employees] who are going from being exempt to going nonexempt because it’s going to change the way they have to account their time at work.”
James said UTRGV employees’ benefits will not be affected after Dec. 1.
The Rider contacted Staff Senate President Michael Aldape, but he declined to comment.
UTRGV faculty will not be affected by the new final rule on overtime due to an exception to this law, Chavez said.
Schools and higher education institutions are generally covered by the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime provisions, according to the U.S. Labor Department website. Many employees at these institutions are exempt from the new overtime rule. Professors are exempt if their primary duty is teaching, tutoring, instructing or lecturing.
“[The final rule on overtime] is a federal law that [UTRGV has] to comply with and we are going to comply with it,” Gonzales said.
–Jesus Sanchez contributed to this report.
