예외적 근로시간 규제 근거로서의 고액임금

Various types of employment and jobs are recently getting more and more diverse. Regulations of employment law also face a lot of situations that can not be dealt with in a uniform style, which was traditional way of employment law. Among these variations, the exemption clause for working time rules is a good example of different way of regulation. What an employee does for his duty, what kind of discretion he/she has, could be a reason for the different regulation. Salary level test is one of the requirements for exemption of FLSA. This is exceptional, in that many other countries do not consider salary level as a reason for exemption of working time regulation but in extremely limited situations, as a supplemental requirement. Recently, there has been abundant debate about salary level test in the United States, and they are mainy concerned with who decides and how much. Surely salary level test gives very clear distinction about who gets and who doesn't overtime payment. However at the same time it conceives controversial problems too. This paper aims on analyzing American history and discussion about salary level test of white collar exemption. In United States, salary level test has been vital requirement, unlike its original intention of legislation. Recent court decisions show that the number of salary level could be beyond the range of administration’s discretion. Also there appears the tendency to construe “fairly” rather than “narrowly”, as was with the U.S. court and Federal department of labor. However, the way to line between persons who are at the side of exemptions and the others should be narrow, and salary level test should be taken as a secondary requirement in Korean context, considering the purpose of labor law and labor market in Korea.