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FLSA

How should we pay for weekend travel time?

08/27/2008
Q. How do we pay hourly employees who are traveling on a day that’s not considered a workday, like Saturday or Sunday? What if they normally have a 10-minute commute to the office but instead they have to go to the airport, and the airport is an hour from their homes? …

Research, diligence, documentation key to making good-Faith FLSA classifications

08/25/2008
Under the FLSA, exempt employees don’t receive overtime pay. But figuring out just who fits in one of the exemptions is not an easy task. Get it wrong, and you could be liable for twice the overtime you should have paid, going back two years. Get it really wrong—by failing to act in good faith—and you’ll have to pay for an additional year. There’s a small silver lining behind that dark cloud …

Employ teens? Child-Labor fines, enforcement on the rise

08/21/2008
Buried in the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed this year was a little-noticed provision that substantially increased the potential fines against employers that violate federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) child-labor laws. If employees under age 18 are killed or seriously hurt due to an FLSA child-labor violation, employers can now face a $50,000 fine for each violation

GAO pokes a stick at Wage & Hour auditors, waking them up for more aggressive OT probes

08/21/2008

A recent GAO report sharply criticized the Bush administration for mishandling overtime, back-pay and final-paycheck complaints filed by U.S. employees. The report said U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division auditors often failed to thoroughly investigate claims …

DOL: Employees must be paid for time worked, even if they violate mandatory meal-Break policy

08/21/2008
Work time is paid time. Period. You still must pay employees even if they work through a company-mandated meal break without a supervisor’s approval, according to a new U.S. Department of Labor opinion letter released July 29 …

The HR I.Q. Test: September ’08

08/21/2008
Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz …

Can we withhold pay from workers who clock in early?

08/19/2008

Q. Some of our nonexempt employees occasionally begin work before their established starting times. We’ve always paid them for this time, but I’ve recently read that Georgia employers don’t have to pay an employee for such time if the early start was not approved in advance. Is this true? …

Keep exact timecards, or court will use worker’s estimate

08/13/2008
Here’s an incentive to make sure you account for every hour your nonexempt employees work: If an employee claims you didn’t pay her what you were supposed to, and you don’t have accurate time records, the court will calculate what you owe based on the number of hours the employee tells the court she worked …

Judge finds Wal-Mart guilty of 2 million violations

08/12/2008
Wal-Mart’s class-action woes are reaching cosmic proportions. Dakota County District Judge Robert King Jr. in June found the mega-retailer guilty of 2 million violations of Minnesota labor law. At the rate of $1,000 per violation, that could add up to $2 billion in fines …

Déjà Vu owners should have seen dancers’ FLSA claim coming

08/08/2008
A group of exotic dancers who worked at nine Déjà Vu nightclubs over the past three years are suing Lansing-based Déjà Vu Consulting and Durand-based Cin-Lan Inc. for back wages. The lawsuit claims Déjà Vu misclassifies its dancers as independent contractors, resulting in wages below the minimum wage …