Last week, outgoing Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez released a farewell “Memorandum to the American People.” It mostly reads as a recap of the DOL’s news releases over the past several years, touting various DOL initiatives and advocating for further changes, like increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid family leave. The memo
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 …
Hints About New FLSA Regulations Begin to Emerge: Minimum Salary May Double
Last spring, I made some predictions about what the new FLSA regulations would likely include when they were finally released. The regulations were delayed, but what we expect hasn’t changed, as I explained in November. On Twitter this past Friday (and you should be following @WageHourInsight, if you aren’t already), I highlighted
Department of Labor, Trucking Industry Big Winners in Congress’s CRomnibus Bill
In the run-up to the holidays, Congress rushed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to President Obama’s desk entitled the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015. The omnibus spending bill, nicknamed “CRomnibus,” avoided another government shutdown and funded most federal agencies (save for the Department of Homeland Security) through the federal government’s 2015
Department of Labor Sends Final $10.10 Minimum Wage Rule to OMB for Approval
Back in February, we told you about President Obama’s Executive Order 13658 increasing the minimum wage for federal contractor employees. Late last week, the Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division (WHD) submitted its Final Rule implementing EO 13658 to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
Ongoing Confusion about Tips, Even from the White House
Recently, I explained that revising the FLSA regulations will not be easy, and highlighted tip credits as one such area in particular. In my last post, I discussed yet another case involving the miscalculation of wages for tipped employees. This time, a large restaurant operator coughed up $2.86 million to settle a lawsuit alleging a
Senate Confirms First Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division Administrator in Decade
The Senate voted narrowly on Monday to confirm David Weil as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD). The narrow 51-42 majority followed a similarly narrow 12-10 party-line committee vote in December. The WHD is the DOL division that, among other duties, implements and enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
President Seeks Additional Funding for DOL to Clear Case Backlog
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.
Obama Administration Expected to Expand Wage and Hour Protections, Disclosures for Federal Contractors’ Employees
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
Obama Calls for Revisions of “White-Collar” FLSA Overtime Exemptions
In an unexpected move, the Obama administration officially announced today that it will issue a Presidential Memorandum to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) instructing its Secretary to update regulations regarding overtime protection for workers under the FLSA. Any changes to the regulation would be the first since 2004, when the Bush administration increased the