Complete Story
09/03/2015
Ohio Supreme Court to decide if commissioned outside sales representatives will receive minimum wage
The lawsuit started with one of those free coupon magazines that come in the mail or in a plastic bag thrown on lawns and front stoops all over Ohio. This one was called JB Dollar Stretcher, and there was a companion website too. Most of the hundred or so employees of the company were outside sales representatives who were paid on commission. Two of them filed the lawsuit. They said they each worked about 50 hours a week selling ads. And they say the 2006 Ohio Fair Minimum Wage constitutional amendment entitled them to be paid minimum wage.
The owners’ attorney John Susany told the justices his clients were “astounded” they were sued because they had always displayed a poster from the Ohio Department of Commerce showing the minimum wage – before and after the amendment passed – and those jobs that are exempt from it. And, he says, one of them is and has been outside sales people. “And so it is no hyperbole when I said my clients were completely, completely surprised when this happened because they did what good employers should do – they posted this.”
But the lawyer for the sales reps, Andrew Biller, said the problem isn’t with the amendment that voters approved – it’s with the statute that state lawmakers wrote to put it into effect. Biller said that law conflicts with the Federal Labor Standards Act, because “the FLSA says employee means any individual employed by an employer.” And Biller said the law exempts certain employees, but the amendment’s intent was clear all along. “The proponents of the amendment focused on raising the wages of low-wage workers, and that would be consistent with including previously-FSLA exempt workers, because those are also low-wage workers if they’re earning less than minimum wage,” Biller said.
