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Wages & Hours

Supremes to hear U.S. Steel ‘changing clothes’ case

04/25/2013
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. Workers at the company’s Gary, Ind., plant claim they should be compensated for the time it takes them to change clothes for work at the work site.

How to draw DOL scrutiny: Withhold pay, fudge time sheets

04/25/2013

The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division doesn’t want to see any funny business when it comes to accurately recording hours worked or paying employees on time. Don’t even think about manipulating payroll systems. Doing so will result in double damages going back three years.

Landscaping company illegally trimmed wages

04/25/2013
Cyrilla Landscaping in Coraopolis, outside Pittsburgh, has agreed to pay $39,091 in back wages to 29 workers following a DOL investigation—plus another $39,091 because the feds found the violations were willful.

$1 million: The cost of not having enough time clocks

04/24/2013
Do your employees have to wait in line to punch their time clock? Heads up: Long lines of workers punching in and out has cost a California employer more than $1 million.

Another reason to let managers set their own hours

04/23/2013
Here’s incentive to give managers more control over their own schedules. It could prevent one dis­­gruntled employee from turning a simple lawsuit into a class action that covers everyone else with a similar job. That might make the difference between a small verdict and a huge one.

If pieceworker has downtime, you must pay at least minimum wage for those hours

04/23/2013
Do you employ workers on a piece-rate basis but require them to stick around when things are slow or perform other tasks between the piecework? If so, watch out!

Workers ignoring our time clock rules: Can we dock their pay?

04/23/2013
Q. Many of our 60 employees fail to correctly clock in or out and it’s creating major payroll issues. I’ve met with employees who are chronic time-clock abusers and placed warnings in their files. Can we dock an employee for failing to clock in or out?

Settling wage-and-hour case? You’ll pay worker’s lawyer, too

04/11/2013
Before you settle an FLSA claim for what you might consider “peanuts,” remember that any settlement will probably include court-authorized legal fees that you will have to pay to the employee’s lawyers. That’s because any success in collecting unpaid overtime or minimum wages also means the employee who wins that money is entitled to have his legal fees paid.

When considering pay cuts, weigh the risk of being on the hook for unemployment benefits

04/11/2013
Sometimes, employees quit in a huff over a pay dispute and then try to collect unemployment compensation benefits. They may argue that a pay cut justified their resignation. But unless the reduction is substantial—usually greater than 20% of previous pay—the resignation wouldn’t be justified.

Using uniforms, cleansers probably means FLSA applies

04/03/2013
Some employers think they can ignore federal wage-and-hour rules because they are small and don’t hit the $500,000 annual sales volume required to be covered by the FLSA. That rarely works because merely engaging in interstate commerce by using uniforms and cleaning supplies may be enough.