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FLSA

San Antonio restaurants must pay $500K for cooking books

07/29/2015
San Antonio-area China Sea restaurants got burned when investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) found the company maintained two sets of books, one showing them in compliance and one telling the true story.

Red Robin tip pool case to move forward in court

07/24/2015
Two former servers at Red Robin Res­­­­taurants in Wilkes-Barre and Dick­­son City, Pennsylvania, can proceed with their Fair Labor Standards Act class action against franchisee, Lehigh Valley Res­­tau­­rant Group, Inc. The suit alleges Lehigh’s tip pooling scheme violates the FLSA because it includes workers who only have a de minimus interaction with customers.

$1.25M lesson: Blue collar work is always eligible for OT

07/24/2015
A Texas-based oil and gas drilling company, ROC Services Inc., has settled an overtime lawsuit filed by two workers in Pennsylvania. Two employees testing wells filed suit, alleging the employer’s pay scheme ran afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

DOL redefining ‘independent contractor’

07/21/2015
Continuing its attack on misclassification of employees, the U.S. Department of Labor has released new guidance that clarifies how companies should distinguish between employees and independent contractors.

Employee or independent contractor: DOL’s ‘economic realities’ test

07/21/2015
To classify workers as either employees or independent contractors, the Department of Labor says employers should use this “economic realities” test.

No records, no mercy: Failure to track hours spikes damages

07/17/2015
Taqueria Papa Chano’s will pay $36,000 in back pay and overtime to 11 workers following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD).

Daily pay? DOL stops effort to pad Thai eatery’s profits

07/17/2015
Employees at the Aura Thai restaurant in Long Beach, California will no longer be paid flat daily rates for their work. The practice certainly didn’t curry favor with U.S. Department of Labor investigators.

New DOL guidance cracks down on employers’ use of independent contractors

07/16/2015

Continuing its attack on the misclassification of employees, the U.S. Labor Department released new guidance on July 15 that aims to clarify how businesses should distinguish between employees and independent contractors. The guidance stresses that the FLSA’s definition of “employment” is very broad, and that employers are probably violating the law if they’re treating workers who are integral to the business as independent contractors.

OT pay for checking email? DOL to explore it

07/15/2015
The HR news on everyone’s radar right now is the U.S. Department of Labor’s proposed regulations resetting the salary basis for exempt employees. But that’s not all the DOL is up to. Buried in those proposed regs was an announcement about technology and overtime that was easy to miss, but which may dramatically alter how you pay some hourly employees.

Settlement agreement may not kill OT claims

07/15/2015
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that settling a state court lawsuit over a noncompete agreement (with a payment and an agreement that supposedly included all employment claims) didn’t bar the former employees from suing for unpaid overtime that they claimed was owed to them under the Fair Labor Standards Act.