"But The Employees AGREED To It!"
Our recent "Famous Last Words" post cautioned that having an employee enter into an agreement that is contrary to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's requirements does not trump those requirements....
View ArticleFuzzy Thinking About Fluctuating-Workweek
In 2011, the U.S. Labor Department did its best to discourage the use of fluctuating-workweek pay plans under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. It undertook this in a grab-bag release collectively...
View ArticleTop Official Held Personally Liable Under FLSA
A recent decision by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (Connecticut, New York, and Vermont) is a reminder that individual business owners and management members can face claims of personal...
View ArticleUSDOL's "Naughty or Nice?" App
The U.S. Labor Department has signaled for some time now that it considers shame and ostracism to be enforcement tools. USDOL's Wage and Hour Division has taken another step in this direction by...
View ArticleUnauthorized Alien Workers Recover FLSA Wages
Two federal appellate courts have ruled this year that, as one of them put it, "aliens, authorized to work or not, may recover unpaid and underpaid wages under the [federal Fair Labor Standards Act]."...
View ArticleFormer Employee Successfully Disavows FLSA Settlement
The Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (with jurisdiction over Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) recently expanded the court's 1982 ruling in Lynn's Food Stores, Inc. v. U.S. limiting the settlement...
View ArticleFluctuating-Workweek Ruling Might Be Reviewed
Last month's "Fuzzy Thinking" post mentioned Sisson v. RadioShack Corp., in which a lower federal court in Ohio deferred to the U.S. Labor Department's 2011 allegation that paying performance bonuses...
View ArticleGroup Advocates Pay For White House Interns
The unpaid-interns ruckus continues to unfold, this time in a way that entangles President Obama.As we observed in March 2012, an unpaid White House intern might conclude that he or she is "engaged in...
View ArticleCFPB Bulletin Addresses "Payroll Card Accounts"
A statement of some federal-law limitations and requirements relating to the increasingly popular practice of compensating employees via the use of "pay cards" came from an atypical direction on...
View ArticleCompanionship-Exemption Regulation To Be Released
Months after its April 2013 target date, the U.S. Labor Department announced this afternoon that it is issuing a Final Rule re-stating the requirements for and limitations upon the "companionship"...
View Article"Extra" Pay And Overtime Headaches
A recent $4 million settlement between the U.S. Labor Department and a Texas healthcare employer highlights a recurring overtime issue under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. USDOL reported that...
View ArticleAre You Paying More Than You Must?
Employers sometimes pay workers more than the federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires. Of course, some do so as a matter of choice.However, in other situations, this happens because management...
View Article"Naughty Or Nice?" App Bogs Down
We reported in July that the U.S. Labor Department had launched a "Fair Labor Data Challenge" asking application developers to create "an innovative tool that lets an informed consumer find out if a...
View ArticleInternships Might Be Vanishing
We have observed for some time now that the spate of wage-hour lawsuits might be expected drastically to curtail the availability of internships of both the unpaid and paid varieties.Employment Law 360...
View ArticleFLSA Investigations Result In Criminal Convictions
A U.S. Labor Department press release serves as a reminder that violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act can result in more than just back-wage payments and other civil remedies.According to...
View Article"Comp Time" Might Be Moving Up On The Agenda
We reported in April and May about the fast-tracked "Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013" passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. This measure proposes to amend the federal Fair Labor...
View ArticleIt's Past Time To Dispel The "Half-Time" Fog
A decision by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (with jurisdiction over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) illustrates and exacerbates the utter and unwarranted morass into which the calculation...
View Article"Right to Know" Initiative Apparently Expanded
The U.S. Labor Department has announced another proposal to conduct a survey relating to "worker classification issues" under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.Readers will recall our posts about a...
View ArticleHotels, Motels Still Drawing USDOL Attention
One of the U.S. Labor Department's continuing federal Fair Labor Standards Act enforcement initiatives targets hotels and motels. Officials are following-through on their 2010 warning that they see...
View ArticleSenate "Misclassification" Bill Bears Watching
Yet another "misclassification" bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would impose new prohibitions, requirements, and penalties relating to categorizing a worker as being either an employee or a...
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