By Staff
Athletic Management, 16.6, October/November 2004, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1606/wurulesupdated.htm
Both high school and college athletic administrators have reason to take note of developments in the realm of labor law this fall. For high school athletic directors, there are new guidelines for allowing non-professional support staff to volunteer to coach. At the college level, changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) may make it trickier for assistant coaches to be classified as exempt workers.
The new guidelines at the high school level were issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) at the request of the North Carolina School Boards Association (NCSBA). Over the past few years, several school districts have been sued by nonexempt employees who were not paid overtime for working over 40 hours in a week. Much to the surprise of many athletic directors, nonexempt employees who coach in the school district where they work must be paid time-and-a-half for any hours they work over 40—they can not simply be paid the usual coaching stipend. (Please see "Working Overtime" in the August/September issue of Athletic Management.)
In response, schools had asked the DOL if nonexempt workers can volunteer to coach. The answer is yes, as long as the volunteer work is different enough from their primary job in the district. But what constitutes "different enough?" the NCSBA asked. The new guidelines, called a "letter ruling," attempt to answer that question.
Most significantly, the DOL ruled that teacher’s aides can volunteer to coach teams. "The letter ruling said that coaching and being a teacher’s aide are not the same duties, and that allows us to tell schools that it’s safe to let them volunteer," says Allison Schafer, Legal Counsel and Director of Policy at the NCSBA.
Other clarifications include the following:
• A full-time bus driver employed by a district can not volunteer to drive teams to away games, unless he or she is the parent of a child on the team.
• A full-time bus driver can volunteer to coach a team, but schools must take care not to add unpaid bus driving to his or her coaching duties, since that violates the law.
• School district administrative assistants can volunteer to coach.
• A school bookkeeper can volunteer to keep the books for the athletic booster club only if the booster club is a separate agency from the school—a determination that needs to be made in each district with the district’s legal advisor.
At the college level, new FLSA rules that went into effect Aug. 23 may change the exempt/nonexempt status of some assistant coaches. In the past, most assistant coaches at the college level have been exempted from overtime by being designated as "executive," one of the FLSA’s three exemptions, and earning more than $8,060 annually. However, new rules state that employees who earn less than $23,660 annually (or $455 weekly if the position is not year-round) can no longer be categorized as exempt.
One solution schools are exploring is designating assistant coaches as teachers, since teaching is not subject to the wage cut-offs (all teachers are exempt, regardless of salary). However, not all coaches will qualify as teachers, and administrators need to take care in making this designation.
"An assistant coach, while working quite a bit with students, may not be viewed as a teacher unless the school can make a very good case for it," says Scott Bearby, Associate General Counsel for the NCAA. "You need to work with your human resources professionals to carefully determine what the employee’s primary duty is and whether or not they qualify."
Olympic sports, which employ more part-time coaches at lower salaries than revenue sports, could be hit the hardest. "A lot of institutions may have to say, ‘If we have to pay overtime for these positions, we just can’t keep them,’" Bearby says.
The NCAA is working with several other higher education organizations to seek clarification from the DOL, and Bearby believes the academic community may need to work toward changes to the law. In the meantime, "Administrators need to work with their human resources department and their legal counsel to determine on an individual basis what this means for them," Bearby advises.
More information on and the full text of the DOL’s letter ruling, can be found at: www.ncsba.org/flsa.htm.
More information about the new rules are available at: www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/main.htm.