Over the last few months we’ve been asked on an almost daily basis when the DOL will be publishing its hotly anticipated white collar exemption rules. The short answer is still, we don’t know. A few months ago, the word was “late 2016,” which made some sense due to the extremely high volume of
Involved In Multiple Businesses? You Might Be a Joint Employer!
In our previous post about the DOL’s new Administrator’s Interpretation (“AI”) on joint employment under the FLSA, we focused on “vertical” joint employment. That’s the variety of joint employment that exists when there is some sort of intermediary, like a staffing firm, PLA, or temp agency between the employee and the employer that is ultimately
Supreme Court Rejects One Strategy for Defeating Class and Collective Actions
By Guest Author: Michael A. Warner, Jr.
In recent years, one tactic for attempting to defeat wage and hour class and collective action lawsuits class action lawsuits has been to offer the named plaintiffs full relief for their individual claims in the case. Even if the offer is declined, the theory goes, the offer renders
Think Using a Temp Firm Solves Your FLSA Compliance Problems? Think Again, Says the DOL
On January 20, 2016, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor issued a new Administrator’s Interpretation (“AI”) on the issue of joint employment under the FLSA. What is joint employment? The FLSA generally applies only to “employers.” If a company or organization is an “employer” of a given employee, it’s responsible
City Not Liable For Chicago Police Officers’ Blackberry Work Time
If a tree falls in the forest but there is no one around to hear, does it make a sound? If a non-exempt worker answers an e-mail message after hours on her Blackberry but fails to put in for overtime, has she performed compensable work? While I’m not aware of any firm legal authority on the first question, a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois offers a detailed and instructive analysis of the second.
In Allen v. City of Chicago, a group of 51 of current and former officers in the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Organized Crime (“BOC”) alleged that the City willfully violated the FLSA by requiring them to use their Blackberry devices for work-related communications while they were off duty without compensation. Continue Reading City Not Liable For Chicago Police Officers’ Blackberry Work Time
New Exemption Rules May Be Delayed To Late 2016
Waiting is the hardest part.
Ever since the Department of Labor issued its proposal to substantially increase the minimum salary level needed to classify an employee as an exempt executive, administrative or professional employee, employers have been asking when the new rules will take effect. This is not an academic question: many organizations have long
Do we have to keep track of exempt employee time? [Wage & Hour FAQ]
Q. We keep track of work hours for non-exempt employees using an electronic timekeeping system. For our exempt employees, we really have no records of how many hours they are working each day or week. Are we required to? Even if it’s not required, should we?
A. Like many legal questions, the answer is “it depends.” The first question is somewhat easier. The FLSA requires employers to maintain accurate records of the hours worked by non-exempt employees, but not for exempt executive, administrative, or professional employees. If your employees work in a jurisdiction that does not have its own additional recordkeeping requirements, then no, you are generally not required to keep records of your exempt executive, administrative or professional employees’ work hours.
However, some states do have their own recordkeeping requirements. Continue Reading Do we have to keep track of exempt employee time? [Wage & Hour FAQ]
What is the Cost of a Free Lunch? [Wage & Hour FAQ]
Q. We offer free lunches to our food service employees. Can we count the cost of these lunches as part of our employees’ compensation?
A. The short answer is yes, but as we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, particularly in the world of wage and hour law. To explore the right way to do this, it’s helpful to take a look at some common mistakes that employers make.
Suppose Jerry works at Bob’s Steak ‘N Beans as a line cook. Bob’s is located in Illinois, so the minimum wage for non-tipped employees is $8.25 per hour. Suppose Jerry works 45 hours over 5 work days in a week. For that week, he would be entitled to straight-time wages of $371.25. However, rather than paying that full amount in cash, Bob provides Jerry with a free Steak ‘N Beans Bonanza platter each day for lunch. The menu cost of the platter is $15, so Bob deducts $15 per day from Jerry’s pay, leaving him with $296.25 in straight-time pay. On Thursday, Jerry brought a salad from home, but Bob still charged him for the platter since it was available to Jerry even if he didn’t eat it. (Bob ended up serving it to a customer.) Bob didn’t just fall of the turnip truck, so he knows that he also has to pay Jerry overtime for 5 hours. So Bob takes Jerry’s total straight-time wages ($296.25), divides by 45, and divides by two to get an overtime premium rate of $3.29 per hour. Multiplied by five hours, he gets $16.46. Adding that amount to Jerry’s straight-time pay, Bob comes up with a total of $312.71.
Can anyone spot the problems here?Continue Reading What is the Cost of a Free Lunch? [Wage & Hour FAQ]
Many Home Companionship Workers No Longer Exempt
Agencies and other third-party employers of live-in household employees and home companionship providers, take note: the long-delayed regulations reclassifying many of these workers as non-exempt employees entitled to minimum wage and overtime under the FLSA are now in effect.
Since 1974, the FLSA has included an exemption for certain categories of domestic service workers, including
11th Circuit “Tweaks” Test For Whether Interns Are Employees
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are probably familiar with the six-factor test that the U.S. Department of Labor uses to determine whether an intern should be considered an employee for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act. (If not, DOL Fact Sheet # 71 provides a summary, and we explained