Wage & Hour Defense Blog : Wage & Hour Lawyer & Attorney : Epstein Becker Green Law Firm : DOL Enforcement, FLSA Coverage

In a recent Client Alert prepared by Jeff Landes, the firm summarized several new laws passed by the New York legislature which will affect employers.  Among these laws was a very important change to the wage and hour laws, which will affect all companies with employees in New York.

Rate of Pay, Regular Pay Day and Overtime Rate Must Be in Writing and Acknowledged by New Hires

Labor Law Section 195(1) currently requires employers to provide newly hired employees with information regarding their rate of pay and the employer's regular pay days – such notice need not be written. On July 28, 2009, however, the New York Labor Law was amended to require employers to provide all employees hired on or after October 26, 2009, with written notice of their rate of pay and the employer's regular pay days. In addition, employees who are eligible for overtime (including non-exempt, salaried employees) must be notified of their regular hourly rate and their overtime rate of pay. Employers will be required to obtain a written acknowledgment of receipt of such notice from each new employee. The legislature has not specified the content and form of the acknowledgment, but indicated that the Commissioner of Labor may provide guidance.

by Doug Weiner

Employers have been experiencing a new wave of wage and hour lawsuits with significant six and seven figure recoveries and, in some cases, liability for managers who are responsible for failures to pay the wages required by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and state wage and hour laws. At the same time, state legislatures have been amending the laws to increase protection for employees.

Governor David A. Paterson announced on August 27, 2009 that he had signed a bill (A. 6963) into law to enhance wage and whistleblower protections for workers. The new law takes effect on November 24, 2009. Following the national trend of expanding the rights of workers, New York's legislature stated that "strengthening the recovery of unpaid wages will also help the state and local economies." Further, "the penalty increases are estimated to generate $75,000 in state revenues."

The bill increases penalties against employers who retaliate against employees for exercising their rights under the New York State Labor Law. Minimum penalties are increased from $200 to $1,000, and maximum penalties are increased from $2,000 to $10,000.

The bill also provides that when an employer is found to have violated New York State Wage Laws, liquidated damages of 25 percent of the unpaid wages will automatically be added unless the employer proves a "good faith belief that the underpayment complied with the law." Under the prior law, liquidated damages were awarded only upon a finding that the employer's failure to pay the wage was "willful."

As a result, under the new law, liquidated damages can be awarded if the employer had not inquired about whether its wage system was in compliance with state law. Since New York State liability can go back as many as six years, liquidated damages can be significant indeed. This suggests that a periodic audit of pay practices is a wise course for employers to take to ensure they are in compliance with applicable laws and regulations and not vulnerable to class actions and administrative proceedings.

Section 1 of the bill amends New York Labor Law 198(1-a) to allow the Commissioner of Labor to bring either a court action or an administrative proceeding to collect wage underpayments and liquidated damages on behalf of workers.

Section 2 of the bill amends New York Labor Law 215(1) to expand the categories of conduct protected against employer retaliation. Significantly, the new state law now expressly prohibits retaliation when an employee has made a complaint to his or her supervisor. This expands whistleblower protection beyond the federal FLSA, which in the Second Circuit pursuant to Lambert v. Genesee Hospital, 10 F. 3d 46 (2d Cir. 1993), requires an employee to "file" a formal complaint before his or her conduct is protected from reprisal.

In light of this new law particularly, and the prevailing national climate generally, employers now must redouble internal efforts to verify that their pay practices comply with applicable state and federal wage and hour requirements. Even though a pay practice has prevailed in an industry for decades without challenge, the practice still could be challenged today or tomorrow and found to be in violation of laws passed recently or over 70 years ago.

When employees are disciplined, it is vital to document the reasons for the discipline. A contemporaneously written explanation for imposing legitimate discipline is the best defense to a claim of retaliation.

Questions about pay practices and discipline are best brought to the attention of experienced employment counsel to prevent inadvertent and costly mistakes.

A client this week asked us to provide an opinion letter regarding the exempt status of certain supervisors, and some tips on how to avoid lawsuits regarding mis-classification.  Although some of the advice was specific to the client's business, much of the advice is applicable to a wide variety of industries.  An excerpt from the memo is below.

• Carefully craft job descriptions to emphasize exempt duties over non-exempt duties – require employees to acknowledge their job descriptions in writing.
• List the two or more employees supervised by an exempt manager in the job description (either by name or by title). This ensures this requirement is not inadvertently overlooked.
• Ensure that managers are involved in both hiring and termination decisions.  The Company should have a paper trail easily proving this element.  Even if managers do not typically make termination decisions, consider having them “sign off” on the termination of employees at their location, thus establishing their participation in the process.
• Supervising two or more employees is a minimum requirement, not necessarily a safe guidepost. Often, supervising only a handful of employees is not a full time job, leaving a manager with most of their time spent on non-exempt work. If the manager does not have a sufficient number of subordinates to justify spending most of his or her time on management, reconsider whether the employee should be classified as exempt.
•  Exempt managers should be paid differently than non-exempt workers. For example, a manager’s pay should be notably different from those he or shesupervises, not only in amount but also in type. A manager’s pay should be related primarily to management performance (i.e. performance of the department or office as a whole), not the performance of non-exempt tasks. Likewise, bonuses and other incentives should not be tied to non-exempt tasks.
• Consider how the number of managers in an office or location will be perceived by a judge or jury reviewing the facts. Someone has to be in charge, and one manager of a department or office is likely to pass muster as a valid exempt employee. As the number of exempt managers in a single location rises, however, the defensibility of the exemptions goes down.