Wage and hour law is full of traps for the unwary. Even compensation practices that are well-accepted across an entire industry can sometimes create huge headaches for employers in the face of a legal challenge. Case in point: A recent decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Hewitt v. Helix Energy Solutions Group, Case No. 19-20023, in is causing upheaval in the energy sector by suggesting that even highly paid supervisory employees may be entitled to overtime pay on top of their six-figure compensation because they are paid a day rate rather than a weekly salary.
Continue Reading Even High Earning Supervisors Can Be Entitled to Overtime
New Minimum Salary For Exempt Employees Takes Effect January 1, 2020
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Labor issued its final rule concerning overtime exemptions. The rule increases the salary threshold for employees exempt under the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions (the “white collar exemptions”) from $455 per week (or $23,660 annually) to $684 per week (or $35,568 annually). Additional changes include:
- Increasing the total annual compensation threshold for highly compensated employees (“HCEs”) from $100,000 per year to $107,432 per year;
- Permitting employers to use nondiscretionary bonuses and incentive payments to satisfy up to 10% of the increase salary threshold; and
- Committing to updating the salary threshold more regularly.
The new rule is set to take effect on January 1, 2020 and increase the number of overtime-eligible employees by 1.3 million. No changes to the duties test have been made.Continue Reading New Minimum Salary For Exempt Employees Takes Effect January 1, 2020
DOL Proposes $35,308 Minimum Salary For Exempt Employees
Earlier today (March 7, 2019), the U.S. Department of Labor announced new proposed regulations (.pdf) that would increase the minimum salary for employees to qualify for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act to $679 per week, equivalent to $35,308 per year. This is an increase from the current minimum
Pay Freeze? Winter Weather and the FLSA
Oh the weather outside is frightful …
No, seriously, it’s actually dangerous here in Chicago. Since much of the city seems to be on lock-down today as we all try not to freeze to death, this seems like a good time to review the rules relating to employee pay during weather-related shut-downs.
For non-exempt employees,
Texas District Court Strikes Down Obama FLSA Exemption Rules
On August 31, Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued his final ruling in State of Nevada et al. v. United States Department of Labor, et al. Judge Mazzant granted the Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, holding that the Department of
What Will The Trump Administration Mean for Wage and Hour Law?
This is a post I certainly didn’t expect to be writing even 12 hours ago, but now that the results of the election are clear, it’s time to give some thought to what lies ahead under the forthcoming Trump administration. Details will of course start to emerge over the next couple of months, but I
New Rules Announced: $47,476 Minimum Salary, Effective 12/1/2016
Late yesterday the White House and Department of Labor released key details of the new FLSA overtime exemption rules for white collar workers. The final rules themselves have just been released this morning. We are still digesting 500-plus page
New Salary Threshold May Be About $47,000
According to a report from Bloomberg BNA, unnamed DOL staffers have stated that the salary threshold in the hotly anticipated FLSA exemption rules will be about $47,000 per year, down slightly from the $50,440 level suggested by the proposed rules published last summer. This is not an official announcement, so while the statement may well
DOL OT Exemption Rules DOA? Federal Wage Theft Legislation? Probably Not …
In a move that should surprise precisely no one
who has been paying attention to current U.S. politics, GOP lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate introduced legislation to block the U.S. DOL’s anticipated overtime exemption rules, just two days after the DOL sent the final rule to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB review is typically the final stage before publication of a new rule.
The legislation, dubbed the “Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act,” would:
- Void the DOL’s new rules;
- Allow the DOL to publish updated rules only after conducting a detailed analysis of the rules’ impact on small business, non-profit and public employers;
- Bar the DOL from adopting rules that provide for automatic adjustments of the minimum salary level without going through a formal notice and comment rulemaking process;
- Require any proposed changes to the “duties” tests for the overtime exemptions to be published and subject to public notice and comment.
Continue Reading DOL OT Exemption Rules DOA? Federal Wage Theft Legislation? Probably Not …
New FLSA Exemption Rules – Coming In July?
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