Guest Blogger: Lindsey Marcus
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, recently became the third appellate court to adopt the federal common law standard for successor liability in a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claim. The decision likely means that successor employers will find it
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued an opinion that essentially watered down the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime exemption for executives. This decision perhaps makes an unwitting case for President Obama’s intended overhaul of the FLSA’s white collar exemptions that we discussed recently.
An employer must satisfy four elements to take advantage of the FLSA’s executive exemption:
This four-element standard is what remained after the Department of Labor’s 2004 revisions to the FLSA regulations that ditched what were then known as the “long test” and the “short test” under the former regulations. The long test had a lower salary basis and also required the employee to have regularly exercised discretionary powers to have devoted no more than 40% of their workweek to activities not directly and closely related to management. 29 C.F.R. § 541.1 (2003). The short test used a higher salary basis, but only required employees to regularly direct two or more employees and to have a primary duty of management. Id.
Because there is no objective test for determining what an employee’s “primary duty” is or what “particular weight” means, this has led to substantial litigation, including the Eighth Circuit’s Madden v. Lumber One Home Center decision last month.Continue Reading I’m an Executive, You’re an Executive, We’re All Executives! 8th Circuit Lowers the Bar for FLSA “Executive” Exemption
Although unlikely to be passed in its current form, President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request to Congress allocates an additional $2 million of the Department of Labor’s requested $1.8 billion budget so that the Department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges (OALJ) can hire additional personnel primarily to deal with a massive backlog of cases.
Q. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), do we have to define “full time” to mean 40 hours per week, or is that left to employers’ discretion? Can we maintain a 40-hour standard for wage and hour purposes, but have a lower threshold for certain benefits, like paid time off accrual or supplementary health
Last month, I wrote about the Obama Administration’s Presidential Memorandum to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) instructing its Secretary to update regulations regarding overtime protection for workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal law that establishes minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. Since then, DOL Secretary Perez has spoken publicly about
Recently, we told you about President Obama’s Executive Order increasing the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 per hour. Tomorrow, President Obama is expected to announce that he will sign two new executive orders that will apply to federal contractors: (1) one order will forbid retaliation by federal contractors against employees that discuss their compensation with other employees; and (2) the other order will require federal contractors to maintain certain records on compensation organized by race and gender, and report that data to the federal government. These Orders are being issued to further advance the Administration’s cause of equal pay for women.
Approximately 25% of the U.S. workforce engages in federal contracting at least in part, including large, well-known businesses like Northrop Grumman and Boeing and a host of smaller manufacturers, suppliers, and service companies. Unlike the recent minimum wage order, which applied only to new and certain renewed contracts because of the change in compensation rates, these orders could be implemented immediately and apply to all contractors, making these orders’ potential impact much wider.Continue Reading Obama Administration Expected to Expand Wage and Hour Protections, Disclosures for Federal Contractors’ Employees
In past Franczek Radelet Alerts and webinars, my colleagues and I have talked at length about the potential pitfalls for employers of background checks and the changes that the advent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the resulting reorganization at the FTC meant for employers. Yes, I know, this is a wage
The California Supreme Court has decided to hear a case that could impact the ability of undocumented workers to collect back wages or sue employers for discrimination in California, and may prove instructive in other courts that periodically have to tackle these issues. The case is Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co. (Case No. S196568
Yesterday, we discussed the first part of the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Mitchell v. JCG Industries penned by Judge Richard Posner.
As discussed in yesterday’s post, in Mitchell, the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision dismissing an FLSA and Illinois Minimum Wage Law claim where unionized poultry processing plant workers alleged they
A few weeks ago on Twitter, I remarked on Mitchell v. JCG Industries, a case from the Seventh Circuit penned by Judge Richard Posner:
140 characters do not do this decision justice, though. Reading it reminded me of another case we had argued before a panel with Judge Posner and Judge Wood during my