Quick Quiz: FLSA Child-Labor Restrictions
Fifteen-year-old Conor is suspended from high school in December for a period of 60 days due to his disruptive misbehavior. His father Rick is the Shop Foreman at the PoundOut Auto Body Center,...
View ArticleQuick Quiz Answer: FLSA Child-Labor Restrictions
The answer to our December 11, 2013 Quick Quiz is, "No". In declining percentage order, the responses were:"No.": (72.5%)"It is not possible to answer without more facts.": (13.7%)" Yes,...
View ArticleSenate Report Urges Compliance-Based Government-Contract Awards
The U.S. Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions has released a report concluding that there are "widespread labor law violations among major government contractors." The...
View Article"Lawsuits -- I Get It! But What Should We DO?"
"Wage-hour lawsuits are booming," trumpets one recent report after another, and this is certainly true. The risk of high-exposure wage claims against an employer is greater than ever.But worrying over...
View ArticleIntern Lawsuits (Continued): Another Big Settlement
As was anticipated in light of the intensified focus upon internships over three years ago, the next stage was a spate of high-profile lawsuits by unpaid or allegedly-underpaid interns under the...
View ArticleSupreme Court Rules On Donning/Doffing Under The FLSA
Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. paves the way under collective bargaining agreements for the possibility of excluding time spent donning and doffing many...
View ArticleWage-Hour News Notes
Recent headline items touch upon matters of continuing concern:♦ The Employment Policies Institute has highlighted what it calls "Maximum Hypocrisy on the Minimum Wage" among 96% of the Senate and...
View ArticleSOTU "Minimum Wage" Announcement: What Does It Mean?
Considerable concern and confusion has arisen from President Obama's State of the Union announcement that he will raise the minimum wage for individuals working on federal contracts to $10.10 per hour....
View ArticleFast-Food Chain Employers: Take Steps Now to Avoid Being the Next FLSA Headline
On almost a daily basis, we read articles about class action lawsuits and settlements against fast-food chains. Almost all chains have had them. Fisher & Phillips has defended many of these...
View ArticlePresident Signs Federal Contractor "Minimum Wage" Order (Updated 02 20 14)
The White House Press Office reports that President Obama has now signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum-wage rate for workers on federal contracts, as he announced he would do in his recent...
View ArticleSchool-Facilitated Internships: No Worries, Right?
We have long warned that one should not simply assume that an internship associated with or sponsored by an educational institution falls outside of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's requirements....
View ArticlePresident Seeks To Curtail FLSA "White Collar" Exemptions
President Obama has instructed the U.S. Labor Department to revise the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's so-called "white collar" exemptions in a "Presidential Memorandum" released on March 13. This...
View ArticleCampus "Unpaid Intern" Opposition Growing
We have already reported that a group calling itself the "Fair Pay Campaign" aims to pressure colleges and universities not to facilitate unpaid internships or even post notices about them. This...
View ArticleThe BLS Minimum-Wage "Report" Means . . . What, Exactly?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a report entitled "Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2013" which claims that approximately 1.8 million hourly-paid workers made less than the...
View ArticleDisinformation And The "Tipped-Employee Minimum Wage"
A White House report promoting a substantial jump in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage perpetuates now-widely-disseminated propaganda about an alleged "tipped employee minimum wage"...
View ArticleUSDOL Guidance Released On "Adult Foster Care", "Shared Living Arrangements"
We reported earlier that the U.S. Labor Department has issued a Final Rule re-stating the requirements for and limitations upon the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's Section 13(a)(15) "companionship...
View ArticleThird Circuit Addresses FLSA "Successor" Liability
Federal courts continue to embrace a broad view in evaluating the question of whether federal Fair Labor Standards Act liability may be imposed upon a successor company in particular situations.The...
View ArticleDonning/Doffing Personal Protective Items: What About Mealtime?
As we wrote in our January Labor Alert, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. interpreted the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's Section 3(o) to apply to putting on...
View ArticleFLSA Violations Provoke Criminal Referral
As we observed last October, there is reason to wonder whether the U.S. Labor Department has become more inclined than in the past to view criminal prosecution as being an appropriate course of action...
View ArticleThe Death of "De Minimis" Is Greatly Exaggerated
The "de minimis" worktime concept is a common-sense, court-recognized notion dating from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's earliest days. It has been articulated by the U.S. Labor Department this...
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