Today is your lucky day.
For, your see, I have received special permission from my Illuminati brothers and sisters to share with you the secret to navigating this morass that is the U.S. Department of Labor overtime rules and the recent nationwide injunction.
When defending against a woman’s sexual harassment claim, I’ve found that “she was asking for it” is generally a bad defense. So bad, in fact, that you may just want to whip out the old checkbook instead.
Another crappy one, apparently, is trying to convince a judge that an industrial workplace setting is carte blanche to knuckle drag and generally act like pigs.
Also known as the “blue collar” defense.
December 1, 2016 was quite a day!
First, on the day that the Department of Labor’s new overtime rules would have taken affect, I blew up the U.S. Department of Labor‘s spot by winning my 5th ABA Blawg 100 award.
But, buried below the fold was this news that the DOL had appealed a Texas federal court’s nationwide injunction of its overtime rule.
LeBron James has four National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player Awards. And, until yesterday, Bron-Bron and I were tied.
Yesterday, I read this story from David Moye on Huffington Post about a young Jewish girl’s birthday party at which the guests — friends of the birthday girl — were allowed to frost cupcakes. Well, it seems that two of the party guests decided that it would be funny to frost a chocolate swastika into their cupcakes and upload photos to Snapchat.
The mortified mother of the birthday girl called it a “teachable moment” about the horrors of the Holocaust, which, ironically, the swastika frosters had just learned about in school.
So, what does this have to do with your workplace?
The good news for this employee is that her viral Facebook post earned her an award.
The bad news is that the “award” was “Racist of the Week.”
The ugly news — well, other than the post itself — was that the employee lost her job and likely impaired her ability to find similar employment anytime soon.
Did you have a nice Thanksgiving holiday?
How many of you gave thanks to that federal court in Texas for entering a nationwide injunction on the DOL overtime rules?
![By JustinForce (Own work inspired by Stop hand.svg:) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Shiny_stop_hand.svg/480px-Shiny_stop_hand.svg.png "By JustinForce (Own work inspired by Stop hand.svg:) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons")
In a massive stroke of irony, a federal judge — one appointed by President Barack Obama — entered a nationwide injunction Tuesday to stop the implementation of the U.S. Department of Labor Fair Labor Standards Act overtime rules that would have taken effect on December 1, 2016.
In March 2014, President Obama directed the Secretary of Labor to “modernize and streamline” the existing overtime regulations for executive, administrative, and professional employees” (read: create more overtime $$$ because raising the minimum wage wasn’t working).
Nearly three years later, the crown jewel of President Obama’s HR-compliance legacy is on ice and could be completely undone.
Sorry about missing yesterday. I was recovering from a nose bleed and some hurt feelings.
I have freebie for you today to make up for it. Then again, every day is a freebie. Continue reading
The Employer Handbook Blog