The Employer Handbook Blog
It’s not often that I attempt to locate images for blog posts using ‘kickback’ as a search term.
But when I do, rest assured that some employer really stepped in it. Continue reading
Articles Posted in Overtime
Some drug rehabilitation center patients sued for, get this, unpaid overtime. And they may win!
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 employee is a fact-specific. The ultimate determination turns on the “economic reality” of the relationship between the parties involved.
This is not a drill. A new, federal overtime proposal will cost employers $1.2 billion.
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. Continue reading
If your company rounds employee start and stop times, you may want to read this. (Also, if you like Ratt.)
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 Standards Act.
Why might the Phillie Phanatic get paid for the time it takes to get into costume at the ballpark?
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 well stick around for this wage-and-hour lesson. Continue reading
Here’s why so many employers make a mess of the overtime rules.
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 40 hours in a workweek. Continue reading
Holy hell! The Department of Labor apparently caught an employer using a fake priest to get employees to confess workplace sins.
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 be among the most shameless.”
Me? I haven’t seen anything this sacrilegious since Homer ate a god waffle that Marge dislodged from the Simpsons’ ceiling. Continue reading
A company paid an employee’s final paycheck in about 91,500 oily pennies. Now, it owes 4,473,418 more.
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.
When employees claim that your company failed to pay their overtime, you win if your company does this.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay covered nonexempt workers overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek. So what happens when employees claim not to receive premium overtime pay despite working more than 40 hours in a workweek? Continue reading
A new bill in Congress aims to restore OVERTIME protections for employees to “HISTORIC LEVELS.”
Federal law requires most companies to pay minimum wage and overtime pay for employees unless they qualify for an exemption. Employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and get a salary of at least $684 per week, which works out to just $35,568 per year.
But a new overtime reform bill introduced earlier this week in both the House and the Senate aims to boost that salary level yearly until 2027 to make it much easier for salaried American workers to be overtime eligible. Continue reading