A Texas businessman sued the U.S. Department of Labor to amend a decades-old federal policy regarding employee salaries and overtime requirements.
Robert Mayfield owns and operates his family company R.U.M. Enterprises, which encompasses over a dozen Dairy Queen restaurants around Texas and a Wally’s Burger Express in Austin.
Mayfield alleges in his official complaint that minimum salary requirements mandated by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) hamstring his ability to fairly compensate his employees.
The issue arises from an interpretation of Section 213 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). The law includes an exemption for workers who perform executive, administrative, and professional duties (EAP).
This exemption suspends the time-and-half overtime rule for full-time employees who log over 40 hours a week. The time-and-half rule mandates that employers pay hourly employees 1.5 times their hourly rate for every hour they log over 40 hours in a week.