Search
The Employer Handbook Blog“De Minimis” Is Not a Magic Eraser for Seven Daily Minutes of Off-the-Clock Work
Seven minutes doesn’t sound like much. Multiply it by 18,000 employees, every workday, and it’s a wage and hour audit waiting to happen.
Articles Posted in Wage and Hour
Illegal Deductions, No Records, No Tip Credit: A Restaurant’s FLSA Trifecta
A restaurant charged its servers a dollar a shift for silverware and pens. That dollar voided the tip credit for every hour every server ever worked, and the liquidated damages doubled the bill.
The DOL Just Made It Official: The 2024 Overtime Rule Is Gone and the $684 Threshold Is Back.
The 2024 overtime rule is officially gone from the federal rulebook. Courts killed it a year and a half ago; the DOL just got around to the paperwork.
New Jersey’s Independent Contractor Rules Are Now Official — And the Burden Is All Yours
New Jersey did not invent a tougher independent-contractor test this spring. It finally wrote down how it has been applying the old one. Continue reading
How Much Control Does It Take to Become a Joint Employer? DOL Proposes an Answer.
Three administrations, multiple rules, and still no settled federal standard on joint employment. The DOL’s new proposed rule is the latest attempt to end that uncertainty.
Hiring Undocumented Workers and Skipping Wages Isn’t a Loophole.
He worked as a building superintendent for three and a half years. His employer conceded he did the work. He was never paid wages after his first two weeks. The New Jersey Supreme Court just explained why that arrangement is going to cost the employer. Continue reading
An employee worked 816 hours of overtime. The employer still didn’t owe it.
Can an employee secretly rack up overtime and sue for it later?
The Fifth Circuit says not without proof that the employer knew or should have known about those hours. Continue reading
You Can’t Call It a Salary If It’s Just One Day’s Pay
If your FLSA exemption strategy depends on a minimum one- or two-day guarantee, this decision should get your attention.
The Fifth Circuit just rejected that structure under the statute’s salary-basis test. Continue reading
DOL Proposes New Independent Contractor Rule: Now With Fewer “It Depends”
Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced a new proposal on independent contractor classification. If finalized, the proposal would once again reshape how employers evaluate whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under federal law. Continue reading
Travel, Tools, and Waiting Time: What the FLSA Really Requires Employers to Pay
Wage-and-hour disputes often come down to one deceptively simple question: when does paid work actually begin? A recent Eleventh Circuit decision draws some clear – and employer-friendly – lines around travel time, tool time, and waiting time under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Continue reading