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Wages & Hours

What are the ‘seventh-day’ requirements for paying part-time employees?

04/17/2009

Q. If an employee works four-hour shifts for seven consecutive days, are we required to pay him time-and-a-half for the seventh day? Is it even lawful for us to require him to work seven consecutive days?

DOL to ‘refocus’ on enforcement; add 33% more investigators

04/17/2009

Employers, beware: U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is promising to “refocus the agency on its enforcement responsibilities” in the coming months. The proof: DOL is adding 250 new field investigators—a staff increase of more than a third—to look into noncompliance on wage-and-hour issues.

The impact of partial-day absences on exempt status

04/17/2009

Q. We have a policy that allows exempt employees to take partial days off and have the balance of the day charged against their accrued vacation time in two-hour increments. I have concerns that this arrangement—despite the fact the exempt employees are getting their full salaries—could appear that they’re being treated as hourly employees, thus jeopardizing their FLSA exemption status.

Can we pay hourly staff comp time instead of OT?

04/17/2009

Q. I’ve heard conflicting answers: Is it legal for our company to pay our hourly employees comp time instead of paying time-and-a-half for overtime worked?

When making exempt/nonexempt call, actual duties trump résumé or job description

04/14/2009

Don’t rely on old job descriptions or résumés to prove you have properly classified an employee as exempt from overtime. Instead, make sure employees’ job descriptions actually reflect the day-to-day work they’re performing. Little else counts.

Discrimination difference: Unfair not always illegal

04/14/2009

We’d all like to think we run a fair workplace. But people are imperfect, and supervisors sometimes aren’t fair. It’s only when that unfairness harms members of a protected class that the practice is illegal.

United Airlines to pay $850,000 settlement for disability bias

04/14/2009

Chicago-based United Airlines agreed to settle a disability discrimination suit stemming from practices at San Francisco International Airport. The case involved a United policy restricting overtime for workers who had been placed in light-duty assignments.

Solid salary plan beats equal pay lawsuits

04/14/2009

If you haven’t looked carefully at how you determine compensation, here is another reason to do so soon. Employers that can show a court they set salaries based on logical, fair and unbiased factors are likely to win Equal Pay Act lawsuits. That’s because the EPA outlaws sex discrimination in pay, but allows employers to use factors other than sex to set pay rates.

Family Dollar owes big bucks to misclassified managers

04/14/2009

Family Dollar Stores recently got a lesson in the nuances of overtime labor law. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the $35.6 million settlement of an FLSA class action suit brought by store managers at the discount chain.

Slumping auto market puts salespeople out of commission

04/14/2009

Commissioned salespeople are hurting in this economy, but their employers may be feeling the pinch, too. Take, for example, Rick Case Enterprise, a company that owns several Broward County auto dealerships.