Edwin J. Zalewski has been an editor at J. J. Keller & Associates, Prospera ,researching and creating content for employee-related subject matters. Edwin contributes to a variety of Human Resource products including Prospera. He specializes in employment law issues such as discrimination and harassment, overtime, exemptions, and labor relations. Katie Loehrke has been an Editor of Human Resources at J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc. since 2008. She creates content on employment law issues and best practices for HR professionals, writing a number of HR newsletters for employers. She specializes in the areas of I-9 compliance, EEO-1 and Affirmative Action reporting, discrimination, privacy, social media, unemployment, and wage and hour issues
Employers continue to struggle with the proper assignment of exempt status. Claims of wrongful classification may become more frequent since the Wage & Hour Division recently hired another 250 compliance officers. The three “white collar” exemptions which cause the most confusion are the Executive, Administrative, and Professional classifications. To further complicate the matter, many state laws differ from the federal rules, including the permissible salary deductions. It is possible for an employee to meet the federal exemption criteria, but not the state criteria. The webinar " Exempt or Non-Exempt: Properly classifying and paying exempt employees" presented by Edwin Zalewski and Katie Loehrke discusses about what are the criteria that must be met for each exemption, establishing good-faith efforts when applying an exemption, the impact of state laws, provisions for combination exemptions and non-exempt tasks, the salary basis requirements, options related to policy and pay issues such as using PTO, recording working hours, and changing work schedules.

The exempt or the "white collar" employees usually include