The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is complicated, but to the benefit of most employees, it does one very important thing in particular: it ensures that you are paid overtime wages when you work more than 40 hours a week. True, there are exemptions under the law – commission-based jobs are ineligible, for example – but it applies to jobs in the private sector as well as those in the local, State and Federal governments’ domain.
One of the groups exempted from collecting overtime wages includes “any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements, if he is employed by a nonmanufacturing establishment primarily engaged in the business of selling such vehicles or implements to ultimate purchasers.” If you have walked into a dealership in the last decade, however, you might notice that it employees a team of “service advisors:” men and women whose role is to find out what is wrong with your car and then sell you a solution to fix that problem. They do not sell automobiles, nor do they actually service the vehicles: they fall somewhere in the middle.
This nebulous role of the service advisor is at the heart of a lawsuit from 2012, which included “five service advisors who sued Mercedes-Benz of Encino, California in 2012 for alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act” according to Driving Sales. The plaintiffs were paid commission only, and were not eligible for overtime under the law. They claimed that their particular job requirements did not fall under the exemption, and that they should be entitled to overtime wages. The original lawsuit was dismissed, but on appeal the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision. Now, the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear the case.
What can SCOTUS do?
Whether or not the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiff or the defendant rests on how the Justices read the law. A broad interpretation could claim that service advisors are engaged in both the selling and the servicing of vehicles, thus making them ineligible for overtime. However, a closer reading of the law may show that since the plaintiffs neither sell the vehicles themselves, nor physically service those vehicles when their owners take them for repairs – facts that were never in dispute during the case – then service advisors should be entitled to overtime wages because they are not exempt under that same law.
If SCOTUS sides with the plaintiffs, then services advisors around the country could see their paychecks change in a very real way: either they may collect the overtime they are due, or the dealerships may resort to the same legal tactics so many other companies use, and cut the hours of the advisors to ensure that they are never eligible for the additional wages.
Wage and hour violations like this one – indeed, any cases involving the FLSA – are complicated, and best handled by a skilled Tennessee labor and employment attorney. The Gilbert Firm provides comprehensive representation on behalf of employees throughout the state. Please contact Michael Russell or Clint Scott of the Gilbert Firm to reserve a consultation time at one of our offices in Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis or Jackson.