Higher Education Reporter

Some NIU employees are among the millions that could lose their rights to earn overtime pay based on revised Fair Labor Standards Act exempt status regulations.

Students will not be affected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, said Steve Cunningham, associate vice president of Administration and Human Resources. The changes will affect NIU supportive professional staff and exempt civil service workers.

“There are 20 to 30 positions in total that will have to be reviewed,” Cunningham said. “It will be up to the departments to review the salary and duties of those employees to see if they want to change their salary or lose their exemption status.”

If a qualified employee is determined to be performing executive, administrative or professional appointment position duties, the employee would have to make more than $455 per week to be exempt from overtime.

Revised FLSA regulations became effective Aug. 23, and the NIU human resources department is in the process of reviewing potentially affected positions with individual departments.

About 11.6 million workers receive overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week, according to the Labor Department. In all, about 115 million workers are covered by the overtime rules in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Employers have sought changes for decades, complaining the rules were ambiguous and out of date and questioning why highly paid professionals should get overtime pay. Retailers, restaurants, insurance companies and others were getting hit with multimillion dollar lawsuits by workers claiming they were cheated out of overtime pay.

“It used to be no matter what the duties, if the employee made less than $8,060 per year, they could not be exempt from earning overtime,” Cunningham said. “Those salary figures had not been updated since 1965.”

Hourly employees will not lose overtime eligibility. New civil service positions will qualify for overtime, unless human resources authorizes exempt status.

Graduate and research assistants will remain exempt from receiving overtime, regardless of salary.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.