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Antiwork

Employer avoiding minimum salary for exempt employees

I live and work in Washington, where the minimum salary for overtime-exempt employees recently went up from $52,500 to $57,300 for overtime-exempt employees at companies with 50 or fewer employees. In an all-staff meeting yesterday, they announced that they are giving every employee (hourly and salaried) a 5% bump in pay to do their part to keep up with inflation. Great. Except that is still $1600 short of the minimum salary for me. I promptly sent an email alerting them to this new higher salary requirement and requesting that my salary be re-adjusted. I just heard back and they said that my compensation AND exemption status have been flagged for further review. I have an annual review at the end of January and they said “if adjustments are made, I can make those adjustments retroactive to Jan 1.” Is it worth it to file a complaint to Labor and Industries…


I live and work in Washington, where the minimum salary for overtime-exempt employees recently went up from $52,500 to $57,300 for overtime-exempt employees at companies with 50 or fewer employees.

In an all-staff meeting yesterday, they announced that they are giving every employee (hourly and salaried) a 5% bump in pay to do their part to keep up with inflation.

Great. Except that is still $1600 short of the minimum salary for me. I promptly sent an email alerting them to this new higher salary requirement and requesting that my salary be re-adjusted.

I just heard back and they said that my compensation AND exemption status have been flagged for further review. I have an annual review at the end of January and they said “if adjustments are made, I can make those adjustments retroactive to Jan 1.”

Is it worth it to file a complaint to Labor and Industries over them withholding funds from me as a (currently) salaried, exempt employee, or should I just wait until my annual review and hope they don’t demote me to hourly?

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