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
The saying goes that “Cash is King.” However, entrepreneurs often quickly learn (sometimes in painful ways) that it is Cash Flow that is really King. Run a quick Google search for “accounts receivable” financing or factoring to get a sense of how important that market is for businesses. Working for a telecommunications manufacturer, I can
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
On September 12, 2012, Family Dollar announced that it will pay up to $14 million to settle a class action in the Southern District of New York. Similar to other class actions filed against Family Dollar over the years, New York store managers claimed that the Company failed to pay them overtime. Although the agreement
On April 3, 2012, a federal district court in South Carolina determined that two Dollar General store managers met the executive exemption from overtime pay under the FLSA. Gooden v. Dolgencorp and Thomas v. Dolgencorp. Granting summary judgment to Dolgencorp, the court held that Gooden’s and Thomas’s primary duties were managerial in nature based
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