I read the stories every day: some small business, often a local restaurant or a similar “mom and pop” operation, gets sued or tagged by the Department of Labor for failing to pay minimum wages and overtime to employees. Here’s just one example.
I have worked with a fair number of small and midsize
Q. A salaried, exempt employee who recently returned from a week of unpaid FMLA leave claims that he is entitled to be paid his full salary for entire week because he responded to a number of work-related e-mails and telephone calls while he was out. Do we have to pay?
A. Wage and hour law is
Q. One of our salaried exempt employees appears to have violated our sexual harassment policy. We would like to suspend him without pay for 3 days. Is this allowed under the FLSA?
A. Maybe, but check your state’s laws as well.
With a few specific exceptions, employees whose duties qualify them as executive, administrative and
According to the facts described in her complaint, Kathy Minor was hired by Bostwick Laboratiries, Inc. as a medical technologist on December 24, 2007. Just a few months later, on May 6, 2008, Minor claims that she and several co-workers met with Bostwick’s chief operating officer to complain that their supervisor had altered employee time
Regular readers may have noticed a decline in the frequency of our updates around the end of the year. That’s because, in addition to the usual holiday and year-end craziness, my wife and I welcomed a new baby on the day after Christmas. As I get back into the swing of work and blogging, I
For roughly the last two years, the U.S. Department of Labor has been contemplating (some would say “threatening”) revisions to the recordkeeping regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act that would require an employer who classifies an employee as exempt to prepare a written justification of the basis for the exemption. This document would have
In May, my partner Staci reported on a ruling against Applebee’s by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, holding that tipped employees who spent more than 20 percent of their working time on nontipped activities like cleaning restrooms were entitled to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Applebee’s asked the U.S. Supreme Court
We are extraordinarily proud and excited to announce that our firm’s FMLA Insights blog has been named to the ABA Journal’s list of the top 100 legal blogs. This is only the most recent honor for FMLA Insights, which finished second in the Lexis Nexis Top 25 Labor and Employment Law Blogs of 2011
Q. Our holiday pay policy says that employees must be at work the day before and the day after a holiday. Our office is closed Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving. If an exempt employee works Monday and Tuesday but calls in “sick” on Wednesday, can we deny the employee holiday pay?
A. Many employers have
Last month, a federal judge in New York granted preliminary approval for a settlement in which Hofstra University agreed to pay up to $485,000 to a class of 256 undergraduate and graduate students who allegedly were not paid minimum wage and overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The plaintiff class included both