Technical Bulletins: Do Your Executives Pass The FLSA's Salary (And Duties) Test?

Certain battalion chiefs in the Kern County, California fire department are not executives under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). That's what the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in Abshire v. County of Kern, 908 F.2d 483 (1990). In March, the U. S. Supreme Court refused to review that decision, in effect upholding it. Some newspapers called that case an expensive disaster for municipalities. The real question is whether the executives in a city's municipal departments are executives as defined by FLSA.

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