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FLSA

Yes, you can fire for working off the clock

02/20/2013

Some employees refuse to follow rules prohibiting off-the-clock work. Some—insisting they can’t complete their work any other way—may clock out and then return to work. That puts employers at risk for wage-and-hour lawsuits. You don’t have to put up with it.

Long Island restaurants can’t duck fair pay

02/07/2013
A chain of three Long Island Asian restaurants will pay more than $1 million in back wages and penalties to 255 current and former employees who were underpaid.

Could nonexempts’ use of smartphones cause wage-and-hour liability?

02/01/2013
Hourly employees’ use of smartphones (as well as online email access from remote locations) has boosted worker productivity. However, it has also substantially increased the risk of off-the-clock-work violations.

In Austin, half-baked pay scheme costs dough

02/01/2013
Chuy’s Panaderia Bakery, which oper­­ates two locations in Austin, has agreed to settle charges of failing to pay the federal minimum wage to 101 employees.

Steakhouse staff worked to the bone for lean pay

02/01/2013
Raleigh’s Brasa Brazilian Steak-house will pay $68,482 to 18 workers after the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division found the steakhouse failed to pay workers overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a week.

Rite-Aid OT settlement will cost over $27 million

01/25/2013

The Rite-Aid drugstore chain, based in Camp Hill, will end 14 different over­­time lawsuits with one huge settlement of more than $27 million. Plaintiffs had alleged the company misclassified assistant managers and co-managers to avoid paying them overtime.

Want to cut overtime pay? It’s OK to alter workweek–as long as change is permanent

01/24/2013
Good news for cost-conscious employers: As a federal court ruled recently, employers are free to change how they designate the workweek as long as they do so “permanently”—even if the sole reason is to reduce overtime pay.

Why bother with job descriptions? 3 reasons

01/22/2013
Writing job descriptions for all of the positions in your company may sound like a lot of work, especially when they are not required by any law. But there are plenty of legal reasons why you should have them.

San Francisco grocer held too much green

01/22/2013
The San Francisco grocery store chain Casa Guadalupe and its owner have agreed to pay more than $120,000 to settle a wage-and-hour lawsuit filed by the DOL. The owner admitted to investigators that he willfully failed to issue time-and-a-half overtime pay to employees who worked more than 40 hours in a week.

Pay lawsuits: Keep time records on your side

01/22/2013

While the FLSA requires you to have a reliable system to accurately track employees’ hours and pay, the regulations don’t say which types of timekeeping methods you should use—paper, time clock, etc. Any timekeeping plan is acceptable, the rules say, “as long as it is complete and accurate.” But it’s vital to know exactly what data to track.