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FLSA

Katrina cleanup workers get $1 million in back OT

04/15/2010

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has settled a lawsuit against an Irving-based engineering and construction firm for failing to pay employees assigned to cleanup crews following Hurricane Katrina. The overtime award to the workers: $1 million. Under a consent judgment, Fluor Enterprises, which was the general contractor with FEMA, will pay 154 workers.

Understand the fine line between an exempt professional and nonexempt technician

04/15/2010
To save on overtime costs, employers often try to shoehorn employees into Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions. That can be a potentially devastating mistake. This square-peg-in-a-round-hole problem often occurs when employers try to fit employees into the FLSA’s professional exemption.

To pay or not to pay interns? The feds are cracking down

04/13/2010
With fewer real, paying jobs available to young people, the number of unpaid internships is on the rise. Now the U.S. Department of Labor and many state labor departments (including California) are stepping up enforcement against employers who illegally use internships for free labor. Here’s how to stay on the right side of the law.

DOL replaces opinion letters with new ‘administrator interpretations’

04/06/2010
The Labor Department has ended its longstanding practice of issuing opinion letters to answer employers’ specific questions about complex wage-and-hour issues, replacing them with general guidance on how to comply with federal pay laws. Critics say the move marks a fundamental shift that will help employees—and harm employers.

How should we calculate paid ‘on-call’ time?

03/26/2010
Q. We have a maintenance employee who we will soon put “on call” for various shifts—occasionally at night—to fix equipment. How should we handle his on-call pay?

Can we offer comp time instead of overtime pay for nonexempt employees who work OT?

03/26/2010
Q. Can we offer our nonexempt employees comp time instead of overtime pay during a pay period? If we can, do we have to offer it at one and a half times, just like overtime is paid? For example, if an employee works one hour of overtime, do we have to give him one and a half hours of comp time?

Feds publish guidance on new child-labor penalties

03/23/2010

A little-noticed provision buried in last year’s Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) raised the stakes for employer child-labor violations. It increased the maximum penalty to $50,000 for each child-labor violation that causes serious injury or death of an employee under age 18.

Can we use a tip credit to make sure our employees make at least the minimum wage?

03/19/2010
Q. It has been our practice to pay our waiters and waitresses less than the minimum wage because we include their tips in their hourly wage. Is this legal?

Pay the minimum or more? Broad tip pools OK

03/19/2010
The FLSA has complicated rules for employers that pay less than the minimum wage to staff who receive tips. If tips aren’t large enough, then the employer has to top off the wages so the employee makes at least minimum wage. But what happens if the employer pays the customarily tipped employee minimum wage or more right from the start? That’s the question the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently answered for the first time.

Workers ‘illegal’? You still have to pay them

03/12/2010

Employees can always sue if they haven’t been paid for their work—even if they’re in the country illegally and not eligible to work in the United States. Employers can’t use their undocumented status as an excuse for not paying minimum wage and overtime under the FLSA.