FLSA

Ensure exempt teleworkers are properly classified

08/04/2022

If you have exempt employees who work remotely, be sure they really are exempt. It’s important because it is difficult to track teleworkers’ time. If they have been misclassified, you could violate the Fair Labor Standards Act in two ways: failing to pay overtime and failing to properly track all hours worked.

Beware forcing bosses into nonexempt work

08/04/2022

Restaurant and retail managers who are classified as exempt often have to step in and perform non-managerial work when the need arises. Normally, that doesn’t destroy their exempt status. But when an employer purposely minimizes the number of hourly workers assigned to shifts, the risk of managers losing their exempt status rises dramatically.

D.C. Circuit to NLRB: Take a fresh look at joint-employer ruling

08/02/2022

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the National Labor Relations Board to revisit its most recent, Trump-era ruling in Browning-Ferris Industries, a landmark decision that defined what it means to be a joint employer under the National Labor Relations Act.

Biden’s White House will be first to pay its interns

07/19/2022

To determine if interns should be paid, the Department of Labor and the courts have used a primary-beneficiary test, which looks at who benefits most—the employer or the intern.

New overtime rules due in October, likely raising salary threshold to $50K

06/28/2022

According to the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda, released June 21, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division plans to float a notice of proposed rulemaking concerning executive, administrative and professional exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime requirements.

Heed this $42 million wage-and-hour lesson

06/16/2022

If you are a mid-sized to large employer, making even basic wage-and-hour mistakes can be massively expensive. To make matters worse, the Fair Labor Standards Act authorizes courts to double what’s due to punish employers for mistakes. So do most state wage-and-hour laws.

Dodge performance review FLSA traps

06/16/2022

Most employers wisely tell hourly employees not to work unscheduled overtime. But employers often send mixed messages, too, telling employees they’re expected to work hard and achieve productivity goals their supervisors set. Then, at review time, workers may be penalized for not meeting those goals.

Beware ‘salaries’ that stiff hourly employees

06/02/2022

Most employers comply with the FLSA in a straightforward way by tracking all time worked and calculating each week’s paychecks down to the minute. But every now and then, an employer tries to play fast and loose with the FLSA rules. That usually spells trouble if the Department of Labor finds out.

Sweeping FLSA revision advances in House of Representatives

05/24/2022

Nominally, the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act (H.R. 7701) would require employers to provide detailed pay stubs and issue final pay in a timely manner.

The wage-and-hour risks of rounding time

05/19/2022

The DOL says employers should discourage “major discrepancies” between “clock records and actual hours worked.” In other words, frequent and repeated rounding could call into question the accuracy of an employer’s overall time records. So what’s an employer to do?