The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the federal wage and hour law that protects all covered workers from substandard wages and oppressive working hours by requiring that employers pay employees minimum wage and overtime when they work more than 40 hours in a workweek. Determining who counts as an…
Chances are, if one of your employees complained externally about discrimination, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was all up in your company’s business. Perhaps your business has had the not-so-good fortune of undergoing a Fair Labor Standards Act or Family and Medical Leave Act audit from the U.S. Department…
There are members of Congress who believe that many employers commit something called “wage theft.” Wage theft sounds ominous. I picture some fat-cat company owner intentionally purloining money from an employee’s paycheck and re-depositing it into some company slush fund. But it’s more than that. A prior version of a…
For the first time in four years, the U.S. Department of Labor plans to increase the minimum salary level to be exempt from the Fair Labor Standard Act’s overtime requirements. What is the Department proposing? Under the current FLSA regulations, a covered employer must generally pay executive, administrative, or professional (EAP)…
Dijares, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Two wage and hour posts in a row! And this one has an 80’s hair metal track (with a Milton Berle cameo) to back it. So, cut off your sleeves and sing along as we talk about rounding time under the Fair Labor…
By Terry Foote – I took this photograph while attending a Spring Training game, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Because who is going to click if I had titled this post, “The Third Circuit clarifies when compensable work is the ‘integral and indispensable.'” But, now that you’re here, you might as…
Employment lawyers often quip that they could walk into a workplace and spot at least one violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal law governing the payment of overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over…
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “federal wage and hour investigators have seen corrupt employers try all kinds of scams to shortchange workers and to intimidate or retaliate against employees, but a northern California restaurant’s attempt to use an alleged priest to get employees to admit workplace ‘sins’ may…
Roman Oleinik, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons It wasn’t quite instant karma. But two years after paying a worker’s final wages in a wheelbarrow full of oily pennies, an employer learned an expensive wage and hour lesson. A little over two years ago, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)…
For over a decade, federal law has required most employers to provide a nursing mother with reasonable break time to express breast milk after the birth of her child for up to one year after childbirth. Last December, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act became law. The PUMP Act provides…