[MT] Overtime Exemption for blue collar employee?
Husband works for a smaller stage management company that offers rigging, lighting, audio, and stage building services. He was hired for a salaried “warehouse management” position that pays around 50,000 a year. He does not make overtime, their argument being that he is an executive employee. He works anywhere from 90 - 150 hours a pay period.
He doesn’t “supervise” more than one employee and that’s a very loose use of that term. They do the exact same work. On larger projects, he occasionally has more help from seasonal/temp or part time employees. But he definitely doesn’t supervise more than one full time employee. Truthfully, he doesn’t supervise any employees. They answer to whoever needs them at the time, which could be the owner of the company, the lighting manager or the audio manager.
He has referred people to the owner for hiring purposes, but he doesn’t have hiring/firing authority - although it could be argued that his input is heavily considered.
The majority of his work involves actively doing the manual labor for the company. He builds the stages, he does the rigging work, he loads the trucks, he unloads the trucks, he stocks the warehouse, he does audio for gigs, he sets up lighting, etc etc. “Load in and load out” they call this process. Many of these gigs he has completed with no extra help. He will be the sole employee doing all the work for a gig. The job is incredibly physically demanding, requiring heavy lifting, climbing, carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment over long distances etc etc. His PRIMARY duties are construction and de-construction, not management. He doesn’t even actually “manage” anything. He doesn’t order any gear or stock the warehouse. He has no control over organization of the warehouse. All of these things are completed/decided by the owner of the company. He is completing the same type of work that any of the other “non-management” employees do, they just don’t work full time.
What do the experts think? Should this position be overtime exempt?
Posted Aug 13, 2026, 8:40 PM UTC · locked