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Wages & Hours

Labor costs hold steady in ’12 Days of Christmas’

12/06/2014
More evidence that wages have flat-lined: The human capital costs involved in checking off every item on the “12 Days of Christmas” wish list barely budged this year, according to PNC Wealth Management.

When employees miss meal breaks, know how to handle pay

12/05/2014
In many businesses, employees occasionally must work through their regularly scheduled meal breaks. When this occurs, employers must either provide another time slot for their breaks or pay employees for the time worked. To properly handle meal breaks, employers must have a system in place that allows them to know when an employee is working through a meal break so that the time can be credited properly.

New rule on white-collar overtime pay pushed back to February

12/02/2014
Look for the Department of Labor to release a new proposed rule for paying overtime to white-collar workers in February 2015, a roll-back of the department’s original, self-imposed November deadline.

If an employee wants to earn less, not more, what could possibly be the legal risk?

11/19/2014
Q. Can we pay an employee minimum wage for a position that usually pays more? We have an applicant who doesn’t want to lose her pension benefits and can work for minimum wage yet still qualify to receive her pension. Should we have her make that request in writing?

IKEA announces 17% boost in its minimum wage

11/13/2014
Swedish ready-to-assemble furniture maker IKEA will soon give a pay raise averaging $1.59 per hour to its lowest-paid U.S. employees. The move, affecting about half the company’s workforce of 11,000, will raise IKEA’s average minimum wage to $10.76.

When ‘manager’ doesn’t manage, title doesn’t determine exempt status

11/13/2014
Just because an employee is called a supervisor and sometimes tells others what tasks to perform, that doesn’t mean she’s an exempt admin­­istrative or executive employee. It’s the actual duties performed day to day that count.

Beware automatic nightly time-clock resets

11/13/2014

If your business doesn’t operate 24/7, you probably shut down just about everything at some point during the night. That’s especially common with retail operations. If that shutdown includes resetting the time clocks to automatically clock out everyone, you may be courting a lawsuit.

Minimum wages on the rise as ballot initiatives pass

11/12/2014
The minimum wage will increase in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., after voters approved local ballot initiatives on Nov. 4.

Oil firms must pay millions for required pre-work meetings

11/03/2014
Oil and natural gas giant Shell Oil and refiner Motiva have agreed to pay $4,460,764 to 2,677 workers after the U.S. Department of Labor determined the companies failed to pay workers for required pre-shift meetings.

How should we pay for weekend travel time?

10/31/2014
Q. How do you pay hourly employees who are traveling on a day that’s not considered a workday, like Saturday or Sunday? What if they normally have a 10-minute commute to the office but instead they have to go to the airport, which is an hour away?