Technical writers who
prepared complex maintenance procedures at a nuclear power plant qualified for the
administrative exemption from overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards
Act, a federal appeals court ruled.2 The court said that the writers—employed by
American Electric Power in Michigan—worked free from direct supervision and
exercised considerable discretion in their work, which consisted of drafting
new maintenance procedures, changing established ones, and determining the
impact of various plant documents on existing procedures. The writing process
involved comparing different ways to address a problem and choosing one based
on the employee’s assessment of the available information, and writers were
given “wide latitude” in preparing procedures. The company manuals the writers
used to guide their work only concerned style matters, rather than content,
said the court.
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A lower court had
previously determined the writers were not exempt and awarded them $433,000 and
another $111,000 in attorneys’ fees.
You can link to the
decision at www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0267p-06.pdf.
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2 Renfro v. Indiana
Michigan Power Co., U.S.C.A. 6th Cir. No. 06-1935, 2007