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Compensation & Benefits

Court certifies class action in pension calculation suit

10/01/2007

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas recently certified a class action of current and former participants and beneficiaries of a cash-balance pension plan sponsored by United Way of the Gulf Coast. The participants and beneficiaries claimed that the plan sponsor miscalculated early-retirement benefits when it switched the pension plan from a defined-benefit plan to a cash-balance plan …

Lake County learns the hard way that ‘Pre-Work’ still counts as work

10/01/2007

Lake County will be forced to defend a lawsuit filed by several corrections officers who allege the county violated federal pay rules by requiring all corrections officers to report for work 15 minutes early for roll call …

Restaurants shell out $1 million in unpaid wages

10/01/2007

Five Long Island eateries will pay $966,000 in back wages to busboys, counter personnel, dishwashers and cooks to settle a U.S. Labor Department lawsuit. The wages cover two years in which the employees, mostly Hispanic immigrants, worked up to 60 hours per week without overtime compensation …

On-Call pay

10/01/2007

Q. Some of our programming staff members, who are classified as nonexempt, must be “on-call” nights and weekends. That means that if we call them on their cell phones or beepers, we expect them to come to work. Is the time spent “on call”—waiting for a potential call—compensable time? …

4 strategies can put a stop to unauthorized overtime

10/01/2007

As overtime lawsuits continue to surge, organizations often try to defend themselves by pointing to a policy that says employees should have received management approval for overtime. But a written policy isn’t enough, as employers are learning the hard way …

 

Fed HR reps don’t like the government’s pay system

10/01/2007

One-third of the federal government’s chief human capital officers say their employer should replace its general schedule pay system with pay for performance …

No right to full pay for light-Duty work

10/01/2007

Some employees qualify for FMLA leave because they have a temporary medical problem that prevents them from performing their usual job. Often, they’ll elect to accept a light-duty position instead of taking 12 weeks’ unpaid leave.
Light-duty jobs often come with a lower paycheck, presumably because so many of those positions are really “make-work” jobs typically used to accommodate on-the-job injuries. What happens if the employee elects light duty and demands his or her regular pay? Does he or she have that right under the FMLA? Not according to the 7th Circuit …

No pay owed for on-Call employees’ ‘Commuting’ time

10/01/2007

If you have employees on call, you know how complicated paying them can be. But now at least one area of the law is fairly clear. A recent decision in a class-action case held that if employees report to their regular workplace in response to a call, they aren’t entitled to extra pay for their trip time. That counts as regular commuting time—which is always unpaid …

Promised to pay overtime when it wasn’t required? You have to anyway

10/01/2007

Are you sure you understand the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime provisions and when they apply? If not, now’s a good time to review them. An employer that agrees to pay more than required (because it mistakenly thought its workers were hourly employees entitled to overtime) can’t just change its mind …

No need to pay prisoners minimum wage—Court says it’s not ‘Slave labor’

10/01/2007

Is your organization providing employment opportunities within Illinois prisons? If so, you don’t have to worry about being sued for minimum-wage or overtime violations by the prisoners you employ, thanks to a federal court’s common-sense decision …