Articles Posted in Overtime

Thumbnail image for Supreme Court.jpgUnder the Fair Labor Standards Act, a company must pay overtime to non-exempt employees who work over 40 hours in a particular workweek. Non-exempt, huh? That implies that the FLSA also contains various exemptions from overtime pay for employees who meet those requirements. Indeed it does. One of those exemptions is called the “outside sales” exemption. To qualify for the outside sales employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:

  1. The employee’s primary duty must be making sales (as defined in the FLSA); and
  2. The employee must be customarily and regularly engaged away from the employer’s place or places of business.

The pharmaceutical industry is chock full of sales representatives whose job it is to go to doctors’ offices and convince physicians to place orders with drug makers. However, these sales reps never actually transfer title to the drugs. That is illegal in the drug industry.

So then, the question is, do these sales reps qualify for the FLSA’s outside sales exemption? Well, funny you should ask, because that’s what the Supreme Court decided yesterday (here). Details after the jump…

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moneyBilled as a way to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, the Paycheck Fairness Act, did not make it out of the Senate yesterday. The Paycheck Fairness Act earned 52 votes in favor of proceeding to final consideration, eight votes shy of the 60 votes necessary for cloture. The vote came down strictly along party lines, with the two independent senators voting with the Democrats and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) not voting. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) changed his vote so that he could bring the bill up again.

In other news…

  • The Eleventh Circuit Court of appeals ruled on Monday that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits claims for retaliatory hostile work environment. The decision brings the Eleventh Circuit in line with everyone else.

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Cool image, huh? I drawed it myself. The fact that I took the time to do that suggests that I am in no condition to blog intelligently. Plus, Pandora is on the fritz, so I am all sorts of pissy. Therefore, before I turn out the lights and lock the door at the office, how about some Slipknot — anger issues, Eric? — and “That’s what he said” after the jump…

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Fact or Fiction?That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post” d/b/a (just for today) “Eric’s 36th-Birthday Post”

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Ahh…let’s get to today’s question:

Yesterday, I presented “Reducing the Risk of Wage and Hour Litigation” with my partner, Jennifer Platzkere Snyder, at ALM’s In-House Counsel Labor and Employment Law Forum. We talked best practices, common mistakes, and Supreme Court.

We also dipped into some hot issues, the hottest of which, by far, based on audience engagement, was unpaid internships. Oh boy, is it easy for companies to potentially screw up unpaid internships. Just ask Charlie Rose and Harper’s Bazaar.

Want to get ’em right without running afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Six steps to success follow after the jump…

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As the year draws to a close, let’s take a look back at the most popular posts at The Employer Handbook in 2011, based on number of hits:

5. Social media and the workplace. School teacher Natalie Munroe made several appearances on the blog this year. Remember her? She was the blogging school teacher who wrote that her students were “utterly loathsome in all imaginable ways.” Although, Ms. Munroe eventually returned to work, her experience is a sound reminder to always think twice before hitting “send.” You can read the fifth-most-popular post, “Yes, you CAN discipline employees who abuse social mediahere.

4. I’m a poet and I don’t even know it. I’m not sure what inspired the fourth-most-popular post. It must have been a slow news day. How else do I come up with the idea to Haiku — verbing a noun, sorry — about recent employment-law decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court?

The Employment Law Blog Carnival has finally rolled into town.

What is a blog carnival? It is a collection of links on a particular topic — here, employment law — that bloggers have submitted to me, which I then arrange around a particular theme.

For this edition of the Carnival, it’s DJ-ESkeelz on the one and two, with a music-themed employment-law blog carnival. I’ve got 13 hot joints (read: 13 links to employment-law articles from some of the blogosphere’s best…)

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Welcome everyone to the first last edition of T&A Thursday, where I update you on all that’s going on in the world of porn and employment law.

After the jump, it’s all the news that’s barely fit to print. (At least it’s safe for work)

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Last month, the Supreme Court handed down – if not the most important – certainly, the highest-profile decision of this term with Wal-Mart v. Dukes. However, in addition to this headline-grabber, this term saw four other significant employment-law decisions from the High Court about which employers must take note.

After the jump, I revisit each case…in haiku.

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