I'm a software engineer working in California. I've been working at my current company for about 5 years and am generally quite happy. Recently, management has been interested in making me an exempt employee. However, I make significantly less than the minimum salary threshold which is about $90K in the state of CA according to CA.gov (https://www.dir.ca.gov/...) and Society for Human Resource Management (https://www.shrm.org/...), which states:
California Labor Code Section 515.5 provides that certain computer software employees are exempt from overtime pay if particular criteria are met. One of the required criteria is that the employee's rate of pay not be less than a certain threshold dollar amount. Effective Jan. 1, 2018, an employer can choose to pay an exempt computer software employee an hourly rate of at least $43.58 per hour or a salary of at least $7,565.85 per month ($90,790.07 annually).
and so they've been considering changing my job title so as to avoid this requirement.
I think I'm quite fairly compensated and wouldn't feel like I'm being taken advantage of if I don't get a huge raise. However, it seems a bit dodgy since my duties wouldn't change at all. I'd be a software engineer in all but title. Can they actually do this?