salary exemption

The Fair Labor Standards Act, FLSA, protects individuals from being taken advantage of with pay practices. If a person is said to be qualified for salary exemption, and titled as a maintenance supervisor, if that person actually entitled to be salary? If the job entails a majority of their time actually doing the hands on dirty engineering blue collar work do they qualify to be salary. I found this at the DOL website:

Blue-Collar Workers

The exemptions provided by FLSA Section 13(a)(1) do not apply to manual laborers or other "blue-collar" workers who perform work involving repetitive operations with their hands, physical skill and energy. Such nonexempt "blue-collar" employees gain the skills and knowledge required for performance of their routine manual and physical work through apprenticeships and on-the-job training.

FLSA-covered, non-management employees in production, maintenance, construction and similar occupations such as carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, iron workers, craftsmen, operating engineers, longshoremen, construction workers and laborers are entitled to minimum wage and overtime premium pay under the FLSA, and are not exempt under Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA nor the regulations at 29 CFR Part 541, no matter how highly paid they might be (U.S. DOL, 2008).

So according to this if most of a job requires hands on work, physical skill and energy they are not exempt from being paid overtime premium pay and cannot be classified as salary.

Let me throw another twist into this picture. The same position in highly union areas of Ohio and Michigan are hourly with overtime, the positions in non-union dominated states such as Georgia and Florida are salary. Can anyone figure this one out?

Reference: U.S. DOL (2008). Fact Sheet #571. Retrieved on April 5, 2008 from: http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17i_blue_collar.pdf