Wages & Hours

They just can’t make beautiful music together

12/23/2013

Long-running negotiations in the Minnesota Orchestra lockout broke down in November after musicians’ representatives walked out of negotiations to resolve disputes about staffing, pay and artistic differences.

IRS to begin enforcing tip vs. service charge rule in 2014

12/18/2013

Regardless of what you call it, tips are amounts customers willingly determine and leave of their own accord; service charges, sometimes called automatic tips, are added to the bill. Tips are taxable when employees report them to their employers; service charges are immediately taxable. The IRS will begin enforcing this rule on Jan. 1, 2014.

In the wake of the recession, where wages grew the most

12/06/2013

Washington, D.C., and Seattle top the list of metropolitan areas experiencing the highest annual wage growth since the recession ended. (The national average was $2,330.)

Strike down the hidden tyranny of pay for performance

12/05/2013

Rewarding your company’s star employees with the heftiest pay raises might not be enough to keep them from looking to jump ship if you expect them to take up the slack of associates who do the bare minimum.

New Calif. wage-and-hour legislation increases employer obligations

12/03/2013

California employers must begin complying with several new wage-and-hour laws enacted in recent weeks. Recent legislation provides overtime pay for domestic workers, mandates more pay for missed “cool-down” breaks, increases damages for minimum wage violations and adds other employer obligations.

Ignore an overtime lawsuit, hand a win to workers

12/03/2013

Can’t convince management that they shouldn’t ignore an overtime lawsuit? Share this horror story.

5th Circuit adds confusion to OT in misclassification cases

12/02/2013

It just got more complicated to calculate the overtime pay you owe a misclassified employee. In Black v. SettlePou P.C., the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district court’s ruling concerning the proper methodology for calculating damages when an employee is misclassified as exempt.

Stormy weather: How to pay when Old Man Winter causes absences

12/02/2013

When harsh winter weather bumps up against the FLSA, the result can be a blizzard of pay problems for you. Employees often come in late, leave early or miss work altogether. How should you count their hours—and their pay? Here’s a flowchart that breaks down your options.

Is probationary employee entitled to holiday pay?

11/29/2013

Q. Are we required to offer holiday pay to employees who are within their 90-day probationary period? Or can we start paying extra for holiday work only after the probationary period is complete?

How should we handle time tracking for nonexempt telecommuters?

11/27/2013

Q. We try to be a flexible workplace and sometimes get requests from employees to work from home for a day or two during school breaks and so on. I don’t have a problem with this for exempt employees, but what about hourly ones? How do we track that time?