Reaffirming that staffing agency recruiters and managers are administrative employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a Michigan federal court ruled that Randstad doesn’t have to pay overtime to a group of staffers who brought a class action case against the global firm.
Specifically, the court said account managers, senior account managers, assistant branch managers, staffing consultants, and senior staffing consultants were exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA.
While the courts have found recruiters and those doing similar work to be exempt employees, in this case the Randstad employees said they were misclassified because their duties did not include the “exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance” required by the FLSA.
Although paid a base ranging from $32,000 to $48,125 plus commissions and bonuses., they claimed, they were “micromanaged” and constrained in how they performed their job by Randstad’s Work Planning Index.
The court found, however, that the WPI was merely a spreadsheet method of tracking the completion of tasks. “The record is clear,” the court ruled, “that they performed inherently discretionary tasks, such as finding the candidates who are the ‘best fit’ for the client and resolving issues when candidates did not perform as expected.”
