OPM Authority on Overtime Policies Affirmed

The Office of Personnel Management’s policies on overtime eligibility for federal employees need not match rules issued by the Labor Department governing the private sector, the United States Court of Federal Claims has said in a case (No. 96-931) rejecting a back pay claim of supervisory border patrol agents who contended they were improperly classified as exempt from overtime pay eligibility. The employees contended that the OPM standards for exempting employees on grounds that they are executives conflicted with the comparable Labor standards and that the OPM rules therefore were invalid. But the court said OPM is empowered to administer the Fair Labor Standards Act as it applies to federal workers and that Congress did not require OPM’s rules to “precisely mimic” those issued by Labor. The court also said the issue was moot as it applied to the employees in the present case, saying they would be ineligible for overtime under either set of rules.