Human Resource Blog

Job Classification

I work for a large clothing retailer (300+) stores. District managers are classified as corporate employees, sometimes referred to as corporate field employees. Six months ago all corporate employee salaries were reduced by 8%. The DMs were the lowest level impacted, employees below their level, managers, co-managers etc. were not impacted. Now we are approaching the July 4th weekend. Corporate offices are closed, and all corporate employees are off and are paid for Friday, as the 4th is listed as one of our paid holidays. However in this instance, DM level employees are now not getting the paid holiday, in fact they are being asked to work on the the 4th (Sat.) –that is a non-issue because they are providing a comp. day for the Saturday worked. .
Can a corporation change how an employee is classified as it suits them without notification?

The employer is acting in a way that is entirely appropriate and lawful.

If the employer switched the District Managers status from exempt to non-exempt and back on a regular basis, that would be unlawful. Or if the employer singled out one or two District Managers and required that they work every holiday, that might be illegal discrimination. However, the policies you mentioned are entirely reasonable.

A better way of stating the holiday policy would be to say that the corporate office is closed on July 3, and employee who work there receive a paid holiday. However, as *field* employees, the DMs do not work in the corporate office. The stores the DM supervises are open on July 4, so a good DM would want to work that day, to ensure everything goes well at the stores. There is also no need for the employer to give DMs a comp day for the holiday — that is an exceptionally generous thing for the employer to do.

If some DMs do not like to work on holidays, they should set themselves the goal of being promoted to a job at the corporate office. 

Job Classification