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Wages & Hours

Can we cut the pay of maxed-out employees?

07/24/2009

Q. We have some employees who are earning the maximum salary for their job classifications. Can we cut their pay if we feel they’re overpaid?

Allow religious days off if at all possible

07/24/2009

Employers are required to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs. That can include adjusting work hours, such as not scheduling employees to work on worship or holy days. Never punish an employee who tells you he must miss work for religious reasons unless you have considered possible accommodations.

N.C. court stops pay raises for migrant workers nationwide

07/24/2009

Minimum wages for immigrant farm workers won’t go up following a North Carolina federal judge’s decision to halt a federal government plan to overturn an H-2A visa regime it had implemented just last year. The injunction means farmers nationwide can continue to pay H-2A visa holders between $7.25 and $8.51 per hour.

Company Records: What to Keep, What to Dump

07/21/2009
A records retention schedule ensures that an organization keeps the records it needs for operational, legal, fiscal or historical reasons, and then destroys them when they’re no longer useful. You have to know what you have and how long to keep it—legally and for your own business purposes—before you can establish an efficient records management system.

Feel free to scale back leave, pay policies that exceed USERRA requirements

07/20/2009

Members of the armed services are protected from discrimination and have re-employment and leave rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). But the law doesn’t require employers to indefinitely continue what amount to voluntary special privileges for service members.

ADA accommodation: Yes to time off, no to paid time off

07/20/2009

Employers have to reasonably accommodate disabilities, and those accommodations may include reduced hours or time off. However, employees aren’t entitled to paid time off.

There’s a big difference between ‘unfair’ and illegal

07/20/2009

Every employer’s goal should be to manage employees in a manner that’s blind to race, sex, age and disability. That doesn’t always happen. But it’s important to realize that it’s only when unfairness harms members of a protected class that the practice is illegal.

You don’t have to provide vacation pay

07/17/2009

Are you considering ways to weather the current economic storm? Perhaps you can cut some benefits, at least for new hires and maybe for current employees, too. For example, nothing in California law (or federal law, for that matter) requires you to offer vacation time or pay.

You can require arbitration of termination wage claims

07/17/2009

It can be months or years of administrative hearings to decide how much you are obliged to pay terminated employees. That’s one reason the Court of Appeal of California has begun advocating arbitration as a legal alternative to hearings.

Changing an employee’s duties may require changing his FLSA classification

07/17/2009

These days, organizations have to do just as much (or more) with fewer employees. That may mean employees’ job duties and responsibilities change frequently. But be aware that such changes could alter the person’s classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act—and open you up to an overtime lawsuit.