Reprographics 101

From Forbes BUSINESS | 6/18/2012 @ 11:24AM

Supreme Court Rejects Labor Dept. View On Sales-Rep Overtime

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected the Labor Department’s interpretation of federal law and ruled that thousands of SmithKline Beecham sales representatives were exempt from overtime rules.

The decision is a rebuke to the Obama administration, which argued that some 90,000 drug reps should be covered under the 1938 law designed to protect workers from exploitation and excessive hours. In a 5-4 decision along traditional conservative/liberal lines, the court ruled that the Labor Dept. deviated from long practice by determining that sales reps who in this case earned more than $75,000 a year were equivalent to hourly workers on an assembly line.

It also could help stem the tide of wage-and-hour cases that have seen courts award overtime to such traditionally exempt employees as stockbrokers and loan officers. Plaintiff attorneys have been aggressively assembling such groups for class actions that seek hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay on behalf of thousands of employees. Drug maker Novartis paid $99 million in January to settle overtime claims brought by the company’s pharmaceutical sales representatives. The Obama administration, to court labor-union support, has every incentive to spread wage-and-hour regulations into traditionally exempt white-collar jobs.

In the decision by Justice Samuel Alito, the court noted that the Obama administration sought to change long-settled rules in 2009 to push pharmaceutical reps out of the category of “outside salesmen” exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime rules. The administration argued that drug reps didn’t fit the definition of salespeople because they don’t actually sell anything. Regulations prevent doctors from buying drugs directly from the reps; instead their job is to indirectly influence prescribing habits by offering information on the drugs (and the occasional free pizza for the staff).

The law says employees can be considered salespeople if they are involved in a sale “in any sense.” The administration argued for a stricter definition where the salesperson “actually transfers title to the property at issue.”

Congress leaves broad discretion to administrative agencies to decide how to implement the law, the court noted, but businesses also have a right to be protected against sudden and arbitrary changes.

To defer to the agency’s interpretation in this circumstance would seriously undermine the principle that agencies should provide regulated parties “fair warning of the conduct [a regulation] prohibits or requires.” Indeed, it would result in precisely the kind of “unfair surprise” against which our cases have long warned.

“Until 2009,” the court wrote, “the pharmaceutical industry had little reason to suspect that its longstanding practice of treating detailers as exempt outside salesmen transgressed” the Fair Labor Standards Act. The only interpretation is that the Labor Dept. didn’t think the law applied to pharmaceutical reps until the Obama administration reconsidered, the court said.

There are now approximately 90,000 pharmaceutical sales representatives; the nature of their work has not materially changed for decades and is well known; these employees are well paid; and like quintessential outside salesmen, they do not punch a clock and often work more than 40 hours per week. Other than acquiescence, no explanation for the DOL’s inaction is plausible.

The decision resolves a split between the Second and Ninth Circuits, with the Ninth, as usual, on the losing side of the debate.

The dissent was led by Justice Steven Breyer, who said the law doesn’t contain an exception for “outside salesmen” who don’t actually sell anything. He said the court should have followed the part of the law leaving such definitions to the Secretary of Labor to make “from time to time.

Hi Joel,

I hope this finds you well. I wanted to share with you an HP announcement that its Designjet web-connected printer portfolio will offer direct access to ARC’s cloud-based PlanWell Collaborate.

With this unique, integrated solution, AEC project managers can use the touchscreen of an HP Designjet ePrinter to view, print and scan project files to PlanWell Collaborate without a PC. HP is also announcing integration with ARC’s AbacusPCR solution for tracking and recovering costs related to printing, scanning and copying.

The press release on this joint solution, available today from ARC, is included below for your reference. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you would be interested in speaking with an HP or ARC representative on the new offering.

Thank you!

MEGHAN KIDD

Senior Account Executive

PORTER NOVELLI

3500 Lenox Road, Suite 1400

Atlanta, GA 30326 | porternovelli.com

M 404-583-6077 | F 404-995-4501

HP Delivers Direct Access to PlanWell Collaborate from Web-connected Designjet ePrinters

Cloud-based offering from ARC streamlines design process

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 12, 2012 — HP today announced that its Designjet web-connected printer portfolio will offer direct access to ARC’s cloud-based PlanWell Collaborate project collaboration application.

Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) project managers can use the touchscreen of HP Designjet ePrinters to access, print from and scan to PlanWell Collaborate. The integrated solution shortens project cycles up to 30 percent⁽¹⁾ with one-step markup distribution and mobile printing capabilities. It also can lower costs by reducing travel and courier use and eliminate errors caused by multiple document repositories.

“Collaborative design is highly complex, involving as many as 30 people and up to 500 plans per project,” said Alex Moñino, worldwide sales and marketing manager, Large Format Printing, HP. “Together, HP and ARC are providing a unique solution to streamline the paper to digital workflow and help customers distribute and print content through the cloud directly from the HP Designjet ePrinter, without the need of a PC.”

HP also announced integration with ARC’s AbacusPCR solution for the HP Designjet T2300 eMFP and HP Designjet T790 and T1300 ePrinters. With AbacusPCR, HP users can easily track and recover printing, copying and scanning costs through the printers’ color touchscreen with no need for external lock-up devices.

PlanWell Collaborate and AbacusPCR for HP Designjet web-connected printers are available now in the U.S. exclusively through ARC, the nation’s leading document solutions company for the AEC industry.

Videos and updates on HP Designjet are available on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HPdesigners, on Twitter at twitter.com/hpgraphicarts and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

© 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

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