Labor Relations Expert Discusses Exempt Duty Dispute

I have worked on a lot of these cases as a statistician. Typically I am tasked with determining if 50% or more of employees’ time is spent performing non-exempt tasks. I have also been asked to calculate damages, either assuming liability and/or after the case has proceeded to the damages phase. As a statistician, normally I defer to either the attorneys or an HR expert to determine if a task is exempt or not. However, I am generally familiar with what tasks tend to be exempt and what tasks tend to be non-exempt. Moreover, my understanding is that if someone is performing both non-exempt and exempt tasks at the same time, the non-exempt work prevails. It is all about what the employees are doing with their “hands and feet,” so to speak. For example, if a store manager is stocking shelves and managing people at the same time, the fact that s/he is stocking shelves takes precedent. I am very familiar with both Duran v. US Bank and Bell v. Farmers. I have written an article about Duran v. US Bank, particularly concerning the implications at class certification. This article is listed in my CV and is available upon request. I routinely perform statistical sampling, and I have done so to gauge variability in terms of how people spend their time. Normally this is performed, at least in part, using a survey or observational study. If there are some data already available, even better.