It seems as though there is a minefield that employers must navigate to ensure that they fulfill their wage and hour obligations to their employees. Employers must somehow comply with overlapping and seemingly contradictory federal, state, district, county, and local requirements. The wave of civil actions that are filed against employers alleging wage and hour

For decades, employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation.  Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they done it and, generally, the courts have approved of it.

But the question employers with time-rounding policies should ask themselves today is

Our colleagues Jeffrey H. Ruzal, Adriana S. Kosovych, and Judah L. Rosenblatt, attorneys at Epstein Becker Green, co-authored an article in Club Director, titled “Recent Trends in State and Local Wage and Hour Laws.”

Following is an excerpt:

As the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) appears to have relaxed its employee protective policy-making and enforcement

Our colleagues Michael S. Kun, Jeffrey H. Ruzal, and Kevin Sullivan at Epstein Becker Green co-wrote a “Wage and Hour Self-Audits Checklist” for the Lexis Practice Advisor.

The checklist identifies the main risk categories for wage and hour self-audits. To avoid potentially significant liability for wage and hour violations, employers should consider

By Jeffrey Ruzal

President Obama has spent much of his second term zealously pursuing an increase to the current $7.25 federal minimum hourly wage. While it is not clear whether a federal wage hike is in the offing, many states have recently taken measures to increase their own minimum wage rates. Effective January 1, 2014,

By Michael Kun

Much has already been written about last week’s California Supreme Court decision in Duran v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, a greatly anticipated ruling that will have a substantial impact upon wage-hour class actions in California for years to come.  Much more will be written about the decision as attorneys digest it,

By Kara Maciel

Our national hospitality practice frequently advises restaurant owners and operators on whether it is legal for employers to pass credit card swipe fees onto employees or even to guests, and the short answer is, yes, in most states.  But whether an employer wants to actually pass along this charge and risk alienating

 By Michael Kun

              You run a supermarket.  You contract with a janitorial company to come in every night to clean the aisles after you close.

               You run an ad agency.  You retain a contractor to handle your mailroom.

               You run a law firm.  You bring in a company to update the books

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.

  1. 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

By: Kara Maciel and Jordan Schwartz

On September 16, 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced that Harris Health System (“Harris”), a Houston health care provider of emergency, outpatient and inpatient medical services, has agreed to pay more than $4 million in back wages and damages to approximately 4,500 current and former employees for