I still get a kick out of people using the term “salary exempt,” as in, we pay that employee a salary, so s/he isn’t eligible for overtime. Under the Fair Labor Standard Act, a salary is just one of several components of an overtime exemption to avoid having to pay employees time and a half when they work more than 40 hours in a workweek. Plus, the salary must be at least $684 per week, equating to $35,568 per year.
Except, that could be increasing significantly soon. Continue reading
Image by analogicus from Pixabay
Common sense dictates that, as human beings, we refrain from certain activities. For example, neither cuddling with a porcupine nor housebreaking a skunk are good ideas. You don’t need a lawyer to tell you that. Continue reading
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Several members of Congress have asked new Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh to require American businesses to pay overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act to anyone making less than $1,591 per week (equivalent to $82,732 per year for a full-year worker) who works more than 40 hours in a workweek. $82,732 per year is the 55th percentile of earnings of full-time salaried workers nationwide.
So, yeah, whoa! Continue reading
Image by Carlos Insignares from Pixabay
Let’s say that some of your non-exempt employees choose to telework for part of the day and work at the office for part of the day, with enough time to perform personal tasks in between. Do you have to compensate them for the travel time between home and office?
Let’s check out some hypothetical scenarios.
No, I haven’t been drinking. Continue reading
Lantay77 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s getting hot in herrrrrrrrrrrrre!
Well, tepid. It’s an employment law blog, after all. Continue reading
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Rarely — and by “rarely,” I mean usually — I’ll have an employer client ask me about countersuing an employee that has just sued the company.
First, you’re probably just throwing good money after bad. But, I generally don’t debate this with my more “principled” clients — at least the ones willing to pay me a large retainer 😉.
But, there’s a bigger issue. Continue reading
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Hopefully, you know by now that you should be tracking the time of non-exempt employees working remotely during this pandemic. If this is news to you, well…
But, have you figured out an excellent way to track hours that an employee works, even though s/he isn’t scheduled to work those hours? Continue reading
Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division / Public domain
Near the end of last month, I blogged here about this Wage and Hour Division (WHD) Field Assistance Bulletin. The U.S. Department of Labor announced that, in most instances, it would no longer pursue pre-litigation liquidated damages arising out of a wage and hour investigation of your company. Continue reading
The Employer Handbook Blog
