Executive, Administrative, and Professional (EAP) Exemptions: The Department of Labor & Industries recently released its proposed changes to its rules on the state Minimum Wage Act (MWA) exemptions for executive, administrative, professional, and outside salespersons.

Two factors make employees exempt from the MWA (and thus minimum wage and paid sick leave): (1) the duties they perform, and (2) the wages they earn.

These proposed rules change the state duties test to conform with the federal duties test. However, the rules will raise the salary threshold for workers to qualify for this exemption. The threshold will ultimately be set at 2.5 times the state minimum wage and will increase over 6 years at different rates depending on the size of the employer. See the attached chart for more information.

For an employee to be exempt, he or she must earn more than the threshold and perform duties consistent with the exemption.

The intended result of the rulemaking is for lower-paid managers (those earning below the wage threshold) to be eligible to receive overtime pay for hours over 40 in a work week (as opposed to being paid just their salary).

For agriculture, this means that workers who are currently exempt may not be exempt in the future. Overtime would have to be paid to those workers for any hours over 40 in a week. However, the overtime rate of pay for production agriculture would be straight time (as opposed to time and a half in most other industries), as long at the current overtime exemption remains in place.

Public hearing dates: July 15, 2019 – August 7, 2019
Written comments due by: September 6, 2019
Intended adoption date: December 3, 2019

http://www.lni.wa.gov/rules/AO18/08/1808CR102.pdf
http://www.lni.wa.gov/rules/AO18/08/1808Proposal.pdf

Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML): Rulemaking for the PFML insurance program continues without controversy at the Employment Security Department. ESD ran into some delays in accepting premium payments from employers. First and second quarter 2019 premium payments and reports should be submitted to ESD between July 1 and July 31 of this year. ESD has released an updated version of its Employer Toolkit, available on the PFML employer website at: https://paidleave.wa.gov/employers. Rulemaking on employee benefits is ESD’s current focus. Washington workers will be able to use Paid Family and Medical Leave benefits starting in 2020. These benefits will generally allow up to 12 weeks of paid leave per year to care for an employee or an employee’s family.

Worker Protection Standard: EPA changed the WPS rules a couple years ago. The Washington State Department of Agriculture adopted emergency rules that put our state rules into conformity with the federal rules. However, since there is shared jurisdiction with L&I’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, L&I is adopting its own rules. The rules between L&I and WSDA must not conflict. After prolonged discussions with WSDA, L&I is moving forward with adopting its own rules that are the same as the EPA and WSDA rules, with the following exceptions, which are more protective:

• Definition of immediate family;
• Cartridge change out schedule;
• Enclosed cab respirator;
• Use of most protective personal protective equipment;
• Eyewashes must provide 0.4 gallons or 1.5 liters per minute for 15 minutes with single point of operation; and
• Heat stress requirements retained.

Public hearing dates: August 20 to August 23, 2019
Written comments due by: August 30, 2019
Intended adoption date: October 22, 2019

The proposed rules can be found here:
http://www.lni.wa.gov/rules/AO16/35/1635CR102.pdf
http://www.lni.wa.gov/rules/AO16/35/1635Proposal.pdf

Once these rules are adopted, WSDA will update its rules to correspond to the L&I rules.