Practice and Review CH20 Employment Law

• Rick Saldona worked as a traveling salesperson for Aimer Winery.
• Sales constituted 90 percent of Saldona's work time.
• Saldona worked an average of fifty hours per week but received no overtime pay.
• Saldona had worked for Aimer for ten years when his new supervisor, Caesar Braxton, claimed that he had been inflating his reported sales calls and required him to submit to a polygraph test.
• Saldona reported Braxton to the U.S. Department of Labor, which prohibited Aimer from requiring Saldona to take a polygraph test for this purpose.
• Shortly after that, Saldona's wife, Venita, fell from a ladder and sustained a head injury while employed as a full-time agricultural harvester.
• Saldona presented Aimer's human resources department with a letter from his wife's physician indicating that she would need daily care for several months, and Saldona took leave for three months.
• Aimer had sixty-three employees at that time.
• When Saldona returned to Aimer, he was informed that his position had been eliminated because his sales territory had been combined with an adjacent territory.

1. Would Saldona have been legally entitled to receive overtime pay at a higher rate? Why or why not?
2. What is the maximum length of time Saldona would have been allowed to take leave to care for his injured spouse?
3. Under what circumstances would Aimer have been allowed to require an employee to take a polygraph test?
4. Would Aimer likely be able to avoid reinstating Saldona under the key employee exception? Why or why not?