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Wages & Hours

How should we handle pay when employee works unauthorized overtime?

03/27/2014
Q. What can we do if our employees worked overtime despite our instruction that they shouldn’t?

T-shirt maker settles OT complaint for $171,000

03/27/2014
San Diego-based Fashion Graphics has agreed to pay back wages and penalties while voluntarily stopping all shipments until the $171,000 is paid to its current and former employees. The screen printer supplies such retail chains as Macy’s, Walmart, Kohl’s and Hot Topic.

Logistics firm settles wage theft allegations

03/27/2014
Mira Loma-based Schneider Logis­­tics has agreed to settle charges it cheated a group of warehouse workers out of $4.7 million in wages. The company, which handles logistics for Walmart, agreed to the settlement without admitting any wrongdoing.

Pay gap shrinking for Millennial women

03/25/2014
Each new group of young women entering the workforce over the past 30 years has started out at a higher average hourly wage relative to men. Here are the statistics on women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s, among 25-to-34-year-olds.

Changing hours: Must we talk to the union first?

03/19/2014
Q. Our employees recently voted for a union and we are now negotiating. Our policies say full-time em­­ployee status starts at 30 hours per week. All of our full-time employees currently work 40 hours per week. We want to decrease the hours of some employees (about 25% of them) from eight to six per day. Do we have to bargain with the union on this change or can we just notify them? 

St. Paul teachers reach contract accord, avert strike

03/17/2014
Days before a scheduled strike vote in late February, St. Paul teachers reached a tentative deal on a new contract. Overall, teachers will receive an 8.6% increase in pay and benefits over two years.

Base pay on the job–not the job description

03/12/2014
The Equal Pay Act makes it illegal to set separate rates of pay for men and women doing the same work. But some employers don’t understand that job titles and job descriptions don’t matter much when it comes to comparing jobs.

No double liability for state, federal classification claims

03/07/2014

Until now, employers covered by the FLSA faced potential double liability under the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act over unpaid overtime for workers misclassified as exempt. A recent decision makes clear that the federal FLSA takes precedence.

Multitasking doesn’t destroy exempt status when managers must do hands-on work

03/07/2014
Salaried retail managers often have to step in and perform nonmanagement tasks. The fact that they do some of the same things that hourly employees do doesn’t mean they aren’t exempt under the FLSA—as long as they are also managing at the same time.

Supreme Court rules on ‘donning & doffing’ in union shops

03/06/2014
The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous interpretation on Jan. 27 of the meaning of “changing clothes” in the FLSA is significant for unionized ­­employers in industries in which workers must change clothes to begin and end their work shifts.