Last week, Judge Gershwin Drain of the Eastern District of Michigan issued a decision entitled Bacon v. Eaton Aeroquip, LLC, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143721 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 9, 2014). Therein, the Judge held that a company’s payment of shift premium payments precluded it from using the “fluctuating workweek method” to calculate the overtime premium compensation owed to salaried front-line supervisors. As the judge explained, these types of “hours-based” or “time-based” bonuses are irreconcilable with the fluctuating workweek method’s requirement that employees receive a “fixed weekly salary.” Someday, Congress will amend the FLSA to do away with the profoundly unfair fluctuating workweek method. Until then, we can be happy that courts are issuing decision that put some limits on the method’s reach.
