Government Employee Classification Program

Government Employee Classification Policy

Aaron Lomax, Kendrix Hardin, Edward Soriano, Daniela Venizelos, Christopher Wilson, Enrique Segovia-Ramirez, Latoya Strickland-Williams

MGT/434

January 30, 2017

Jennifer Schneider

Introduction

         There has always been an on-going debate over what would be more beneficial in the job market, to be a regular employee of a company or to find an independent contractor position? The federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of a total U.S. workforce of 236 million — just over 1 percent of the workforce. But it's not quite as simple as that. Add in uniformed military personnel, and the figure goes up to just under 4.4 million. “It is critical that business owners correctly determine whether the individuals providing services are employees or independent contractors” (Internal Revenue Service, 2015).

        It is crucial to understand the classification of exempt and nonexempt employees, in such way that the employee receives the true benefit of the extra time right pay. Another type of employee classification is the at-will-employment, which is the classification for employees that can be dismissed by an employer for any reason. It is important to become knowledgeable in understanding these classifications. The misclassification of any of these categories could create confusion and violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (Guerin, 2014).       

      Government Regular Employees vs Temporary or Independent Employees

        The determination of the status of a worker between the employee, contingent employee, and independent contractor is incredibly important to an employer, particularly from a level of responsibility, and a level of liability as it applies to our system of law. It is also important to disclose that absent, a distinct clarification in one of these classifications continues to draw powerful constituency within our civil litigation system, because when left implicitly undefined the opportunity exists to petition a court of law in a broad array of circumstances (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2014).

         The accepted notion in the classification of an employee orbits the distinctive relation that an employer has with a worker to codify an employer and employee designation. For example, if an employer directs explicit instruction such as, what type of work to accomplish, the way this kind of work is to be accomplished, the type of equipment and tools to be utilized, and the worker is economically dependent on the employer? Subsequent and seamless to these are the offering of employee benefits and the company partitions aspects of the established salary for state and federal taxation purpose (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2014). The features that pertain to the classification of a “contingent or temporary worker” (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2014, p. 17), are statutorily established. Includes completing work that is temporary in nature, sporadic, and specifically differs from a full-time employee in substance of time dedicated to accomplish this worked (www.dol.gov, 2016).

Exempt Employees versus Nonexempt Employees

         Companies and businesses are required to classify their employees as being exempt or non-exempt. Companies need to determine if they are classifying employees accurately because misclassifying employees can stir up a lot of misperceptions for the employers and staff. Exempt employees are paid an annual salary and cannot work overtime. To be considered and exempt employees you must meet the following requirements of making at least $23,600 per year, paid on a salary basis, and work exempt job duties. Exempt duties are referred to white color jobs because most the exempt jobs are professionals in corporations and office setting.

Nonexempt employees are entitled to overtime pay per the Fair Labor Standards Act.

         Most organizations must pay their employees one-and-a-half times their regular pay rate when they work more than 40 hours a week. Some of the biggest problems with nonexempt employees are companies miscalculate the overtime pay for their nonexempt employees. If a non-exempt employee works more than 40 hours in a week, if he/she works overtime they must be paid at least 1.5 times of their regular pay rate, and if they work on holidays they must be paid time and a half.