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Wages & Hours

Feds to lure college grads

06/05/2009

President Obama has said he wants to “make government cool again.” His latest attempt: The federal government’s HR directors are studying a plan to boost the starting pay of college grads by a cool $8,000 a year—to $41,210.

Lawsuits on the rise: Audit your policies to prevent litigation

06/05/2009

The economy is a shambles, and employers are doing everything they can to stay in business. That includes terminations, salary and wage cuts and temporary furloughs. Nearly every one of those moves carries litigation risk. Have your company’s personnel policies and practices had a checkup lately? A comprehensive audit is one of the easiest ways to spot problems.

Beware incentive plans that deduct pay from exempt employees

06/05/2009

The FLSA sets strict rules for who can be classified as an exempt employee not entitled to overtime pay. One of those is the so-called salary-basis test. Exempt employees must be paid the same salary regardless of the quality or quantity of their work in any given pay period. In other words, employers can’t make deductions from pay for poor work.

Government employers can limit when employees take flextime

06/05/2009

Some government employers let employees arrange their schedules to allow flexible hours. Changing those terms in a union environment may be an unfair labor practice. However, in one recent case, an Ohio appeals court upheld such a change because the union contract didn’t address the practice.

Can we make employees pay for work uniforms?

06/05/2009

Q. Are there any laws that prohibit me from charging my employees for their mandatory work uniforms?

May we ask employees to ‘volunteer’ their time?

06/05/2009

Q. We are considering asking our employees to donate some time back to the company as a way to save costs and avoid having to lay off anyone. By “donate time” I mean working one or more hours per week without pay. Is this legal?

Problem Solved: Real People … Real Comp & Benefits Solutions, July ’09

06/05/2009

This month’s collection of real-world quick tips from American business leaders, brought to you by members of The Alternative Board.

Rules of the road: Know when to pay hourly employees for travel time

06/02/2009
You don’t need to pay nonexempt employees for their commuting time to and from the workplace. That’s simple. But what if such employees occasionally travel off-site (or even overnight) for work reasons?

Economy has workers saying ‘no’ to vacation, ‘yes’ to OT

06/01/2009

Vacations appear to be another victim of Americans’ tight budgets and layoff fears. More than one-third of workers say they won’t use all their allotted vacation time this year, and just 39% plan to take one compete week off …

Must we pay out unused vacation days when we fire employees or they quit?

06/01/2009

Q. Is an employer required to pay workers for their unused vacation days when they resign or are terminated?