County board eyes salary rule changes

According to County Commissioner Art Swannack, Washington Labor and Industries will soon publish changes to the executive, administrative and professional wage rules.

In the state of Washington, the Minimum Wage Act exempts individuals employed in executive, administrative, or professional and outside salesperson capacities from being paid overtime so long as they fit certain criteria with their salary.

This rule has remained largely unchanged since 1976. There are now more exempted workers than was originally intended.

This is similar to the the Fair Labor Standards Act which requires that in the United States most employees are to be paid at least the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) for all hours worked and overtime (time and a-half regular pay) for all hours worked beyond 40 hours in a workweek.

Exceptions of the FLSA from both minimum wage and overtime pay are for executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. These jobs have to meet specific criteria and cannot be paid any less than $455 per week on a salary basis.

The number set on for that base for Washington is still undecided, but is expected to be two or more times the minimum wage.

“If anybody does not have that minimum amount of money earned in a year, you would be entitled to overtime,” Swannack said.

In the case of professionals such as the computer people, the base could be three to four times minimum wage.

“If you earned $50,000 a year, but they set $56,000 as the bottom end of the overtime scale, you have to be paid overtime unless your wage is changed to $56,000,” Swannack explained.

Swannack is concerned for the county in terms of budget and management. He asked Gary Petrovich, county administrator, to work up an example of the county budget with these changes.

“If we have a $70,000 cutoff, that’s going to include 90 percent of all the employees in the county,” said Petrovich.

“It’s all speculation at this point,” Petrovich continued. “I don’t think at this time its going to have a significant county effect.”

In 2018, Whitman County paid about $350,000 in total overtime which mostly includes the road crews and sheriff’s deputies.

Most of the county employees have a by-hour wage and receive overtime when they work.

Elected officials won’t be affected by this rule change, but salaried individuals in the county, cities and private industries would be affected. This is a state rule.

The federal rule is also being updated, coming up to $36,000 minimum.