On January 9, 2024, the United States Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) announced a final rule regarding how to determine whether a worker qualifies as an employee or may be considered an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Designed to combat misclassification, the final rule rescinds DOL’s Trump-era Independent Contractor Rule issued in January 2021 and restores the non-exhaustive six-factor test courts have long used to evaluate whether or not independent contractors were properly classified. The test considers:
As the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency has come to an end, employees are heading back to conferences in droves and resuming their usual training activities. While employers big and small understand they must compensate employees for all time worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) as well as state and local wage and hour laws, whether attendance at such conferences and other training time constitutes hours worked for non-exempt employees remains a murky area for employers.
Four-Factor Test
Generally, training programs, lectures, meetings, and similar activities are compensable hours worked unless all four of the following factors are true:
In reversing a Nevada district court’s grant of summary judgment, the Ninth Circuit, in Cadena v. Customer Connexx LLC, recently held that the time call center employees spent booting up their computers is compensable. Because a functioning computer was necessary for the call center employees to do their job, the court unanimously agreed that the time required to turn on their computer and log in was “integral and indispensable to their principal activities” and, therefore, compensable, subject to certain limitations.
work·week | \ ˈwərk-ˌwēk \
noun
Perhaps one of the most important terms of art under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), an employer’s designated workweek impacts nearly every aspect of an employee’s pay – from minimum wage and overtime to application of most exemptions. Let’s break down this concept.
What is a workweek?
The FLSA regulations define workweek as “a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours - seven consecutive 24-hour periods.” Contrary to popular belief, a workweek need not coincide with a calendar week, nor must it align with an employer’s hours of operation. Instead, it can begin on any day and at any hour of the day. However, the key is that once a workweek is determined, it must remain fixed regardless of the employees’ hours worked with limited exception.
Employers based outside of California can suffer knockout blows if they enter the ring as employers in California and operate under the mistaken assumption that adherence to the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) is the same as complying with the California Labor Code and Wage Orders. Below are the main ways (but certainly not the only ways) employers are “caught cold” because they do not receive or apply California wage-and-hour training and learn the hard way that the plaintiffs’ bar will not pull any punches.
As COVID-19 restrictions have continued to loosen or be lifted altogether, employees have gradually resumed working in the office—and traveling away from it for work-related reasons. When it comes to travel time in the employment context, the answer to the question, “Do I need to pay for that?” often has no straightforward answer. Rather, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) regulations, whether time an employee spends traveling is compensable depends on the type of travel. In this month’s Time Is Money segment, we provide a refresher on when and how employers must pay employees for travel time.
As discussed here, in January 2021, in the waning days of the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a Final Rule setting forth for the first time a standard for differentiating employees and independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The scheduled effective date of the new rule was March 8, 2021.
A number of years ago, I received a kind note around the holidays from my opposing counsel in a wage-hour class action, thanking me and my firm for being their “partners” in addressing employment issues.
Maybe the word he used wasn’t “partners,” but it was something close to it.
At first, I must admit that I thought he was joking.
Then I realized that this attorney, for whom I have great respect, got it.
He got that employers are not looking to violate employment laws, and that the attorneys who represent them are not trying to help their clients violate the laws.
With the end of the year just around the corner, many employers may be contemplating giving year-end bonuses to their non-exempt employees. And bonuses, year-end or otherwise, can create problems for employers when it comes to calculating overtime compensation for those employees.
One mistake some employers make concerns calculating an employee’s regular rate for purposes of paying overtime premiums. Indeed, many employers have found truth in the adage “no good deed goes unpunished” after implementing bonus policies or issuing other forms of compensation intended to ...
Given the number of states that have already ordered the closure of non-essential businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, employers fortunate to remain operational are likely dealing with the myriad challenges of a remote workforce.
As we previously wrote here, employers with work-from-home (“WFH”) policies in place need to make sure they are appropriately compensating their workers and are otherwise complying with all applicable federal, state, and local wage and hour laws.
In the WFH context, the related wage and hour concepts of “waiting time” and “on-call ...
With the March 16, 2020 effective date of the new rule interpreting joint employer status under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) almost upon us, employers should brush up on the updated guidance and review their relationships with workers to ensure compliance. Otherwise, they may face the expensive possibility of being held jointly and severally liable under the FLSA for all of the hours the individuals worked in the workweek, including hours worked for a different company.
The New Rule
A joint employment relationship may arise under two potential scenarios.
Scenario 1: ...
In its first installment of opinions letters in 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) addressed two issues under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”): (i) the salary basis requirements in the context of per-project compensation arrangements and (ii) calculation of overtime pay for employees who receive nondiscretionary lump-sum bonus payments earned over time and not tied to a specific period. (A third letter, FMLA2020-1-A, considered FMLA requirements vis-à-vis public employees.) While neither of these FLSA opinion letters ...
Over the past six months, Congress has made two notable attempts to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (the “FLSA”). In July, U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduced The Modern Worker Empowerment Act (“MWEA”) with the stated aim of harmonizing the FLSA’s definition of employee with the common law. And last month, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the Treating Workers with Dignity Act of 2019 (“TWDA”), which would amend the FLSA to require certain compensated breaks.
Modern Worker Empowerment Act
Subject to certain exclusions, the FLSA ...
On December 6, 2019, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that judicial approval is not required for offers of judgment to settle Fair Labor and Standards Act (“FLSA”) claims made pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68(a). This development may provide employers with a valuable strategic tool for use in FLSA cases, at least in the Second Circuit, allowing the parties to include terms in offers of judgment that the courts might disallow were court approval required.
Generally speaking, Rule 68 offers of judgment are a pre-trial mechanism whereby defendants can cap their ...
As we wrote here in September 27, the new “white collar” salary thresholds under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) are set to go into effect on January 1, 2020.
That deadline is sneaking up fast.
And, like waiting until the last minute to start holiday shopping, waiting until the last minute to make important decisions regarding the new thresholds may not be wise.
The New Salary Thresholds
Effective January 1, 2020, the salary threshold for the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions under the FLSA will increase from $23,660 ($455 per week) to ...
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) has issued an opinion letter addressing the compensability of a long-haul truck driver time in a truck’s sleeper berth during multi-day trips. While this question is highly fact-specific, the WHD’s response offers a useful refresher on the widely applicable Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) concepts of compensability of waiting, sleeping, and traveling time.
In Opinion Letter FLSA2019-10, issued on July 23, 2019, the employer operates a fleet of trucks, licensed by the Department of Transportation to ...
Featured on Employment Law This Week: The California Supreme Court has clarified the state’s ambiguous “day of rest” provisions.
The provisions state that, with certain exceptions, employers will not cause “employees to work more than six days in seven.” The state’s high court addressed three questions about this law that had been certified by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The court determined that employees are entitled to one day of rest per workweek. So, every Sunday marks the beginning of a new seven-day period. Additionally, the court clarified ...
Michael Kun, co-editor of this blog, has a post on the Hospitality Labor and Employment Law Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers: "Ninth Circuit Approves DOL Rule Prohibiting 'Tip Pooling' for Kitchen Employees Even Where No 'Tip Credit' Is Taken."
Following is an excerpt:
The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) permits employers to use “tip credits” to satisfy minimum wage obligations to tipped employees. Some employers use those “tip credits” to satisfy the minimum wage obligations; some do not. (And in some states, like California, they cannot do so ...
In Thompson v. Real Estate Mortgage Network, the Third Circuit addressed a variety of ways in which a plaintiff could pursue claims against entities that claimed they were not her employer.
The plaintiff was hired as a mortgage underwriter by defendant Security Atlantic Mortgage Company (“SAMC”). Allegedly in response to an investigation being conducted into SAMC 's mortgage practices, the plaintiff and others were directed to complete job applications for Real Estate Mortgage Network ("REMN"), a “sister company” of SAMC. The plaintiff completed ...
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to resolve a split among the federal circuits regarding whether time spent in security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as amended in 1947 by the Portal-to-Portal Act. The outcome of the case, Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, could have a significant economic impact on employers who require employees to submit to security searches before or after they begin their workday if employers are required to pay for the time employees spend doing so.
The case arises from claims filed by two former ...
On December 19, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the defendant’s motion for discovery regarding the plaintiffs’ immigration status in Colon v. Major Perry St., Inc., No. 1:12-cv 03788 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).
In Colon, several workers, some of whom are undocumented aliens, sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) to recover minimum and overtime wages that the employer refused to pay. The defendant argued that under the Second Circuit’s decision in Palma v. NLRB, 723 F.3d 176 (2nd Cir. 2013), the plaintiffs ...
Our colleagues Kara Maciel and Jordan Schwartz, both of Epstein Becker Green, recently cowrote an article for PLC titled "Tipped Employees Under the FLSA."
Following is an excerpt:
Wage and hour lawsuits certainly are not new phenomena, but in recent years, service industry employees have increasingly made claims regarding tips and service charges. In particular, employers in states such as Massachusetts, New York and California have seen a surge in class actions involving compulsory tip pools and distributions of service charges to employees. Commonly targeted employers ...
By: Kara M. Maciel
The following is a selection from the Firm's October Take 5 Views You Can Use which discusses recent developments in wage hour law.
- IRS Will Begin Taxing a Restaurant's Automatic Gratuities as Service Charges
Many restaurants include automatic gratuities on the checks of guests with large parties to ensure that servers get fair tips. This method allows the restaurant to calculate an amount into the total bill, but it takes away a customer's discretion in choosing whether and/or how much to tip the server. As a result of this removal of a customer's voluntary act, the ...
On September 17, 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a final rule extending the federal minimum wage and overtime pay protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”) to many direct care or domestic service workers, including home health aides, personal care aides and nursing assistants. The rule will take effect on January 1, 2015.
For almost 40 years, an exemption from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the FLSA has applied to domestic service workers employed to provide “companionship services” for an ...
Wage-hour lawsuits filed under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) represent one of the fastest growing and most problematic areas of litigation facing employers today, especially when such cases are brought as collective actions. A recent Supreme Court case based in class action analysis provides a potentially-useful analog for employers to stave off such collective actions.
Class action criteria are set forth in Fed. R. Civ. P. 23, and they allow for one or more individual named plaintiffs to sue on behalf of a large – sometimes very large – group of ...
By Douglas Weiner
Last month, we released our Wage and Hour Division Investigation Checklist for employers and have received terrific feedback with additional questions. Following up on your questions, we will be regularly posting FAQs as a regular feature of our Wage & Hour Defense Blog.
In this post, we address an increasingly common issue that many employers are facing in light of aggressive government enforcement at the state and federal level from the Department of Labor.
QUESTION: If a DOL team of Wage Hour Investigators arrive unannounced demanding the immediate production ...
By: Kara M. Maciel
Earlier this month, we released our Wage and Hour Division Investigation Checklist for employers and have received a lot of great feedback with additional questions. Following up on that feedback, we will be regularly posting FAQs as a regular feature of our Wage & Hour Defense Blog.
In this post, we address a common issue that many employers are facing in light of increased government enforcement at the state and federal level from the Department of Labor.
QUESTION: “I am aware that my industry is being targeted by the DOL for audits and several of my ...
By Douglas Weiner and Kara Maciel
“There’s a new sheriff in town.” With those words in 2009, Secretary Hilda Solis initiated a policy at the Department of Labor that emphasized increased investigations and prosecutions of violators rather than the prior administration’s emphasis on providing compliance assistance.
Her departure – announced yesterday – is unlikely, however, to have much effect on the Department’s current aggressive enforcement policy, as the top enforcement officer of the Department remains Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith. Solicitor ...
In recent years employees have asserted claims for time allegedly worked away from their normal worksites, on their Blackberries, iPhones or personal home computers. Until now, employers have been faced with the nearly impossible task of proving that their employees did not perform the alleged work. The US Department of Labor and plaintiffs’ attorneys have taken advantage of the well-established obligation of employers to make and maintain accurate records of the hours worked by their non-exempt employees, and to pay for all work “suffered or ...
By Frederick Dawkins and Douglas Weiner
Earlier this month, at the ABA Labor and Employment Law Conference, Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith reaffirmed that investigating independent contractors as misclassified remains a top priority of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) enforcement initiatives. The DOL will continue to work with other federal and state agencies, including the IRS, to share information and jointly investigate claims of worker misclassification. The joint enforcement effort is certainly driven by, among other things, an interest in ...
By Michael Kun and Aaron Olsen
Agreeing with the recent federal district court opinion in our case Alonzo v. MAXIMUS, Inc., 832 F.Supp.2d 1122, 1126 (2011), the California Court of Appeals has confirmed in a case against See’s Candy that California employers may round employees’ time entries so long as the employer’s rounding policy does not consistently result in a failure to pay employees for time worked.
In Alonzo, a federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of our client MAXIMUS, Inc. on the plaintiffs’ time rounding claims. The Alonzo Court explained that ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently confirmed that the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) does not prohibit an employer from modifying its workweek in order to avoid overtime costs. The Court’s ruling in Redline Energy confirms that employers are permitted to modify their workweeks as long as the change is intended to be permanent. Employers are not required to set forth a legitimate business reason for making the change and are permitted to do so solely for the purpose of reducing their overtime costs. The only requirement on ...
By: Kara M. Maciel
Hurricane Sandy is approaching this weekend, so employers along the East Coast should refresh themselves on the wage and hour issues arising from the possibility of missed work days in the wake of the storm.
A few brief points that all employers should be mindful of under the FLSA:
- A non-exempt employee generally does not have to be paid for weather-related absences. An employer may allow (or require) non-exempt employees to use vacation or personal leave days for such absences. But, if the employer has a collective bargaining agreement or handbook policies, the ...
On September 19, 2012, several members of EBG’s Wage and Hour practice group will be presenting a briefing and webinar on FLSA compliance. In 2012, a record number of federal wage and hour lawsuits were filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), demonstrating that there is no end in sight to the number of class and collective actions filed against employers. Claims continue to be filed, raising issues of misclassification of employees, alleged uncompensated "work" performed off the clock, and miscalculation of overtime pay for non-exempt workers.
In this interactive ...
By: Greta Ravitsky and Jordan Schwartz
On July 24, 2012, the Fifth Circuit became the first federal appellate court in over thirty years to enforce a private settlement of a wage and hour dispute arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) in Martin v. Spring Break ’83 Productions LLC.
For decades, federal courts have consistently held that FLSA wage and hour disputes may not be settled privately without approval from either the Department of Labor (“DOL”) or a federal district court. This apparently “settled” area of law was based exclusively on the Eleventh ...
By Amy Traub and Desiree Busching
Just as designers must be cognizant of copycat fashions, employers must be cognizant of copycat lawsuits. In February of this year, Xuedan “Diana” Wang filed a lawsuit against her former employer, Hearst Corporation, on behalf of herself and others similarly situated, alleging that the company violated federal and state wage and hour laws by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime to interns working for Harper’s Bazaar. Wang had worked for Harper’s Bazaar during the fall of 2011. Her lawsuit was filed in February 2012, only five months ...
By Amy Traub, Michael Kun, and Anna Kolontyrsky
As employers know, not only are FLSA collective actions more prevalent than ever, but they can be costly to defend or resolve. In an attempt to bring quick closure to such cases, somedefendants have attempted to settle such claims with the individual plaintiff alone through a Rule 68 offer of judgment before a class has been conditionally certified.
This strategy has come under attack. And the United States Supreme Court will now determine whether it is permissible.
The United States Supreme Court has elected to review a Third Circuit ...
By: Michael Thompson
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSRs) are “outside salesmen” who are not entitled to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The high court’s ruling was predicated on its finding that, in the pharmaceutical industry’s “unique regulatory environment,” the commitments obtained by PSRs equate to traditional sales. Furthermore, the Supreme Court rebuked the Department of Labor (DOL) for “unfairly surprising” the industry by filing amicus briefs arguing that PSRs were ...
The Seventh Circuit has ruled that pharmaceutical sales representatives are covered by the Administrative exemption to the FLSA because “the core function of the representatives’ duties, the physician office visits,” requires significant discretion and independent judgment. While other courts have applied a case specific analysis to determine the applicability of the Administrative exemption in this context, the Seventh Circuit’s analysis appears to be applicable to virtually all sales representatives in the pharmaceutical ...
By Douglas Weiner and Meg Thering
In one of the many “wrinkles” in Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) litigation, settlements of wage and hour disputes between an employer and its employees are only enforceable if supervised by the U.S. Department of Labor or approved by a court. Courts will approve settlements if they are “fair”; however, as demonstrated in a recent decision arising out of New Jersey - Brumley v. Camin Cargo Control - courts may need to be reminded that employers also have rights and legitimate interests. The Brumley Court took what was a bargained-for ...
Wage and hour investigations and class action lawsuits continue to be a potentially serious problem for many employers, resulting in an abundance of new cases filed and many large settlements procured. In addition, in September 2011, under the guidance of the Obama Administration, the Department of Labor and IRS announced an effort to coordinate with each other to address misclassification of employees as independent contractors, which is resulting in additional investigations, fines, and/or legal liability levied on an employer.
By Amy Traub and Desiree Busching
Like the fashions in the magazines on which they work and the blockbuster movies for which they assist in production, unpaid interns are becoming one of the newest, hottest trends— the new “it” in class action litigation. As we previously advised, there has been an increased focus on unpaid interns in the legal arena, as evidenced by complaints filed by former unpaid interns in September 2011 against Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc. and in February 2012 against Hearst Corporation. In those lawsuits, unpaid interns working on the hit ...
Wage Hour laws and regulations are complex, non-intuitive, and constantly changing. Mistakes in wage and salary administration have led to class actions resulting in six and seven figure recoveries against the most sophisticated employers - banks and major industrial giants as well as smaller employers without in-house legal and high level Human Resources officials. Peter M. Panken, Lauri Rasnick and Douglas Weiner in our New York Office have recently authored an article in conjunction with a major national Continuing Legal Education program in Washington entitled: “ ...
By: Kara M. Maciel and Casey Cosentino
We were recently asked by a client to provide guidance on the wage and hour issues associated with company-provided on-line training programs for non-exempt employees. Questions were raised as to when the training is "voluntary" and whether the time must be compensated if the training is completed at home using a personal computer. The answer stems from federal wage and hour law, which provides that such time is likely compensable for non-exempt employees.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to ...
By Amy Traub and Desiree Busching
On February 1, 2012, a former intern of the Hearst Corporations’ Harper’s Bazaar filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of herself and others similarly situated. The lawsuit alleges that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and applicable state laws by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime to interns. The use of unpaid interns is a widespread practice, especially in the retail, publication, and real estate industries, as well as in Hollywood. In fact, in September 2011, a similar lawsuit was filed against Fox ...
By Dean Silverberg, Evan Spelfogel, Peter Panken, Douglas Weiner, and Donald Krueger
Reversing its prior stance, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) proposes to extend the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) to domestic workers who provide in-home care services to the elderly and infirm. See Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Amend the Companionship and Live-In Worker Regulations. In 1974, when domestic service workers were first included in FLSA coverage, the DOL published regulations that provided an exemption for such ...
By Peter M. Panken, Michael S. Kun, Douglas Weiner, and Larissa Lalor-Rosado
Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime compensation has become a cottage industry for plaintiff’s lawyers and for the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) in the Obama years. One of the most difficult issues is whether employees meet the so-called administrative exemption to the Wage Hour laws. In Hines v. State Room, the United States Circuit Court in New England offered some clarity and help to beleaguered employers holding that former banquet sales managers were exempt ...
By David Garland and Douglas Weiner
In February 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit gave a resounding victory to employers in the pharmaceutical industry by finding that pharmaceutical sales representatives are covered by the outside sales exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham, No. 10-15257 (9th Cir. Feb. 14, 2011). Plaintiffs, and the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) in an amicus brief, had argued the exemption did not apply because sales reps are prohibited from making the final sale. Prescription ...
By Douglas Weiner and Meg Thering
On October 20, 2011, the Computer Professionals Update Act (“the CPU Act”) – one of the first potential pieces of good news for employers this year – was introduced in the U.S. Senate. If passed, the CPU act would expand the computer employee exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). S. 1747.
Unlike much of the other legislation affecting employers that has been proposed or passed this year, the CPU Act would make business easier for employers and decrease the risk of employee misclassification lawsuits. If the proposed ...
by Dean L. Silverberg, Jeffrey M. Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Jennifer A. Goldman
On September 21, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") announced a new program that will give businesses the opportunity to resolve prior worker classification issues by voluntarily reclassifying their non-employee workers (such as consultants, freelancers, and independent contractors) as employees for federal employment tax purposes. Officially called the "Voluntary Classification Settlement Program" ("VCSP"), this program is part of a larger "Fresh Start" initiative at the ...
As Hurricane Irene is moving up the East Coast and threatening states from North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, employers should refresh themselves on the wage and hour issues arising from the possibility of missed work days in the wake of the storm.
A few brief points that all employers should be mindful of under the FLSA:
- A non-exempt employee generally does not have to be paid for weather-related absences. An employer may allow (or require) non-exempt employees to use vacation or personal leave days for such absences. But, if ...
According to a federal judge in California, the answer is "Yes." Judge Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a summary judgment ruling on October 16, 2009 holding that temporary employees of Kelly Services were owed overtime for time spent in interviews for job placement. The rationale for the decision included findings that Kelly arranged the interviews, helped the applicants prepare for the interviews, and debriefed them afterwards. The judge rejected Kelly's arguments that the interviews were purely voluntary, and for the benefit ...
Doug Weiner and Matthew Miklave recently prepared a Client Alert noting an effort underway in Congress to broaden the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the Health Industry. That Alert is excerpted below.
Fifteen United States senators have stepped forward to urge the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") to repeal a broad exemption from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") for home health care workers. Under current DOL regulations, home health care aides who perform companionship services for the elderly and ...
by Michael Kun
It has not received much publicity -- yet -- but Representative Alan Grayson of Florida has introduced the Paid Vacation Act, a proposed amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In short, if passed, the Paid Vacation Act would require employers with 100 or more employees to provide one week of paid vacation each year to each of its employees who had worked for 25 weeks or 1,250 hours. Three years after passage, the Act would require those employers to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and smaller employers (those with more than 50 employees) would have to provide one week of ...
One of the issues that repeatedly rears its head in wage and hour litigation and Department of Labor investigations is whether employees are being compensated properly for meal periods. One practice that is almost always controversial, in this regard, is the automatic payroll deduction for lunch.
Absent thorough policies and safeguards to prevent inaccurate timekeeping, the automatic deduction is a significant legal risk that should be used with extreme caution. The reason -- it is too easy for employees to claim they have been asked to work through lunch, or that they can not ...
A federal court in the Southern District of Florida has rejected the "ultimate consumer" defense to enterprise coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The case is Exime v. E.W. Ventures, Inc., Case No. 08-60099-CIV-SEITZ/O'SULLIVAN (S.D. Fla., December 23, 2008).
First, some background: To establish coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a plaintiff must show that: (1) she was “engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce” [individual coverage]; or (2) that she was employed in an enterprise “engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for ...
Blog Editors
Recent Updates
- Employees Not in the Transportation Industry Can Be Exempted From Arbitration Under the FAA
- U.S. Department of Labor Issues Final Overtime Rule Raising Salary Thresholds
- Time Is Money: A Quick Wage-Hour Tip on New York Meal and Rest Periods
- D.C. Expands Coverage of Minimum Wage Law
- Epstein Becker Green’s Free Wage-Hour App Includes Updates on New 2024 Laws