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Wages & Hours

Keep careful pay records, or else courts will take employees’ word for it

04/03/2013
Here’s another powerful reason to maintain meticulous wage-and-hour pay records. If you don’t—and a worker claims you owe him money for unpaid work—the court will rely on the employee’s recollection or records.

Dallas company’s temp shell game doesn’t fool DOL

04/03/2013
Dallas-based Nieman Printing thought it had it all figured out when it hired two temp agencies to employ the same workers doing the same work, but on different days. The strategy: Keep workers from ever putting in more than 40 hours per week for one employer. Desired result: No overtime pay! DOL investigators saw through the charade.

Must unused ‘floating holidays’ be paid?

03/29/2013
Q. We gave eligible employees a “floating holiday” in lieu of having Dec. 31 as a paid holiday. We generally pay employees for all unused vacation, sick and personal time upon termination, but we have no policy regarding an unused floating holiday. Do we have to pay workers for any unused floating holidays upon termination?

Overbrook man sues Walmart, wants class action suit

03/29/2013
A former assistant manager at a Walmart store in Overbrook, Pa., is suing the retailer, claiming it repeatedly violated the FLSA by classifying assistant managers as exempt employees—and he wants to raise the stakes by turning the case into a class action lawsuit.

The price of having too few time clocks: $1 million

03/29/2013
Long lines of employees punching in and out has cost a California employer more than $1 million in fines. The problem: Quetico Manufacturing had only three time clocks to handle 865 workers. The delays cheated employees out of overtime pay.

Golf firm finds hazard of missing paydays

03/25/2013
The DOL has ordered Charlotte’s Carolina Trail Golf Part­­ners to immediately tee up $758,465 in back wages for 347 workers at seven courses who recently went several weeks without getting paid.

On meal and break pay, don’t expect a federal case

03/20/2013
Attorneys who represent workers on meal-and-break-pay claims like to keep those cases in state courts. Employers usually prefer the federal court system. But getting a case moved to federal court isn’t as easy as it used to be.

Court OKs mandatory tip pools for those who serve customers

03/20/2013
The Court of Appeal of California has finally answered a vexing question: Employers can order em­­ployees who receive direct customer tips to turn over some of the money to be redistributed to other employees who provide additional services.

In Chino, having too few time clocks costs $1 million

03/20/2013
The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has slapped citations worth more than $1 million on a warehouse company in Chino, alleging that 865 employees were cheated out of overtime pay they had earned, and didn’t get required 30-minute meal breaks.

Study: Popular kids in high school earn more as adults

03/20/2013
Popularity pays in the form of a fatter paycheck, according to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.