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Wages & Hours

Can we require an exempt employee to use vacation time to coach his son’s sports team?

11/02/2009

Q. One of our supervisors wants to coach his son’s basketball team and has asked to leave work an hour early twice a week. We told him we do not have a problem with leaving early, but that he would have to use vacation time to cover the time lost. He refuses to do that and says we cannot dock his pay for the two hours because he is a salaried supervisor. Is that right?

Must you pay for the commute? Sometimes, yes

10/28/2009

Q. One of our nonexempt employees is now working at a different location on Thursdays. This is a temporary assignment with no end date. It normally takes her 10 minutes to drive to work. But now she has to drive 90 minutes. Should she be paid for 1 hour and 20 minutes of travel time (subtracting her 10-minute normal commute)?

Beware ‘front pay’ trap when job-seekers sue

10/27/2009

Employees you don’t hire can’t cause too much legal trouble, right? Wrong! In today’s tough economy, frustrated job-seekers are more likely than ever to sue. And if they sue for discrimination and win, courts are increasingly likely to award both back pay and lost future earnings …

More than 5,000 have used N.J. state paid family leave

10/27/2009

New Jersey is one of two states in the nation that offers paid family leave to workers. According to Gov. Jon Corzine’s office, the number of workers using the program passed 5,000 in September—not bad for a program that started July 1.

Guess again: You can’t avoid liability by ignoring pay discrimination complaints

10/27/2009

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed an earlier decision made just months ago and ruled that when a woman asks for a raise to equal her male counterpart’s pay, ignoring the request is the same as denying the request. The employee may then file a Title VII pay discrimination claim …

When figuring time worked, you must round in employee’s favor

10/27/2009

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) has changed its enforcement policy regarding the rounding of employees’ time for wage payment purposes. A recent letter from Theodore Easton, chief of enforcement for the NJDOL, confirmed that if a New Jersey employer rounds off any increment of time an employee has worked, it must now be done in the employee’s favor.

You can punish employees for improperly sharing salary information—in some cases

10/23/2009

By federal law, employees have the right to discuss salaries and benefits with one another. Plus, in North Carolina, members of the public also have the right to specific information about public employees’ salaries. That does not mean, however, that public employers can’t reprimand employees who break rules against distributing that information in a way that creates conflict or animosity.

Document solid business rationale for all salary increases and cuts

10/21/2009

Employees who discover their colleagues are making more money for doing the same work often conclude that there can be only one reason—discrimination. Next stop: an attorney, who will try to confirm the pay bias by comparing the employee’s paychecks with his co-workers’. That’s why you have to be proactive, consistently keeping good records that show why you’ve made every compensation decision.

Time on your side: Learn FLSA ’rounding rule’

10/20/2009

The FLSA allows employers to round off an hourly employee’s arrival or departure time to the nearest five minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter of an hour. But your rounding practices can’t always favor the employer. Rounding must be neutral or it must favor the employee. That means if you round down, you must also round up. You have several ways to make rounding fair:

Consider specific circumstances when weighing whether to pay for before- or after-work time

10/20/2009

These days, class-action claims for unpaid work time are becoming common—and can get very expensive. That’s one reason to make absolutely sure you properly pay employees for the work they do. Take a careful look at your hourly employees’ workdays—when they start and when they’re done for the day.