Individual Employee FLSA Coverage

If you as an employer are not covered by the FLSA, you may still be required to comply with the law if some of your employees are subject to individual coverage. Your employees will be individually protected by the law if they are engaged in either of the following:

• interstate or foreign commerce; that is, commerce that moves from one state to another or from one state to another country; or
• producing goods for transportation in interstate or foreign commerce.

For an employee to be involved in interstate commerce, direct contact with interstate channels is not required, but the employee's activities must be so closely related that they are considered a part of such commerce. Using the mail or telephone to communicate with people in other states is enough to establish that you are conducting interstate commerce.

Examples of workers engaged in commerce for FLSA coverage purposes are those:

• in telephone, telegraph, radio, television, and railroad jobs;
• who purchase or order goods from other states;
• who unload, unpack, check, or otherwise handle goods on receipt directly from outside the state;
• who maintain records of such interstate activities;
• who regularly travel across state lines in the performance of their duties; and
• who regularly use instrumentalities of commerce, such as the telephone, the telegraph, and the mails for interstate communication.

Exempt and nonexempt employees. If your employees meet either of the bullet-point tests described above, they are entitled to the benefits of the federal wage and hour law, unless they are specifically exempt under another provision of the law. Exempt employees are generally executive, administrative, and professional employees, while nonexempt employees are more or less everyone else.

If your employees are subject to the FLSA. If you determine that all of your employees, or certain individual employees, are subject to federal wage and hour law, be sure that you are complying with the following areas:

• minimum wage
• equal pay for equal work
• overtime pay
• child labor restrictions