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Wages & Hours

FLSA: Overtime and Base-Rate Pay

01/25/2014

HR Law 101: Employers must pay overtime to nonexempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a single workweek. The overtime rate is one and a half times an employee’s hourly rate. If an employee earns a fixed hourly rate with no other compensation, computing the base rate is easy. But in many cases, it’s not so simple …

Unpaid internships could be very expensive for employers

01/24/2014

By some estimates, more than a million people participate in internships each year in the United States, as many as half of them unpaid or for less than the minimum wage. That can be a problem for em­­ployers: Misclassifying employees as unpaid interns can result in costly litigation, civil fines or both.

Despite misgivings, judge backs Applebee’s arbitration policy

01/24/2014
A waiter at a Philadelphia area Apple­­bee’s will have to go it alone against the company after a federal judge reluctantly admitted the man signed away his right to litigate in federal court when he joined the company.

You could be personally liable for wage violations

01/24/2014
Make sure you understand exactly when and how employees receive their pay. Reason: You could be personally liable for violating the Penn­­syl­­vania Wage Payment and Col­­lec­­tion Law (WPCL).

Mexico’s minimum wage up

01/14/2014
Increasing the minimum wage isn’t just a hot topic in the United States. On Jan. 1, Mexico’s minimum wage rose 3.9%, to at least 63.77 pesos—about $4.88—per day.

Gender Discrimination

01/11/2014

HR Law 101: Your supervisors probably understand that they can’t pay a male more than a female to perform the same job or dole out promotions only to males. What they may not appreciate are the more subtle forms that gender discrimination may take. They may not make an effort to scrutinize their decisions to uncover any entrenched patterns of discrimination and practices that discourage women from applying for promotions or asking for raises …

Tennessee interns score wage of $22 an hour

01/09/2014

College students who are lucky enough to land internships at Knox­­ville, Tenn.-based WeScore.com will earn $22 an hour. The Internet startup—slated to launch early this year—relies on more than a dozen University of Tennessee students to fill out its small staff.

Make sure your pay policies properly address meal breaks

01/08/2014
Paying employees for break time—or not paying them—is one of the trickiest aspects of wage-and-hour law compliance. Know your obligations!

Condé Nast ends internships

01/08/2014
Condé Nast, publisher of The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ and 26 other magazines, has stopped offering unpaid internships following legal fallout from 2012’s “Black Swan” lawsuit.

MCM Grande & MCM Elegante pay $79,000 in back wages

01/07/2014
A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation has resulted in the MCM Grande and MCM Elegante hotels paying back wages and missed overtime to em­­ployees at several of its locations in Texas and New Mexico.