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Wages & Hours

Salaries for ’09: Flat raises, more performance pay

08/28/2008
Despite the economic gloom dominating the headlines, three new national salary surveys predict that U.S. employers will generally hold salary increases steady in 2009. The surveys predict that employers will award average pay increases at or near 3.8% next year, nearly identical to raises given during 2008 and 2007. But smart employers aren’t handing out 3.8% across the board …

Cell phones, laptops and BlackBerrys: Understand the liability risks

08/27/2008

Before you hand out cell phones, laptops and BlackBerrys to everyone on your staff, understand that such tech tools may expose your organization to legal liability. Two legal minefields are particularly worrisome …

How should we pay for weekend travel time?

08/27/2008
Q. How do we pay hourly employees who are traveling on a day that’s not considered a workday, like Saturday or Sunday? What if they normally have a 10-minute commute to the office but instead they have to go to the airport, and the airport is an hour from their homes? …

Indiana employers respond to higher gas prices

08/26/2008
The LaPorte District of Indiana’s Department of Transportation (INDOT) has instituted a four-day workweek for operations workers to battle high fuel costs. INDOT hopes the move will bring 10% savings on fuel, utilities and fleet maintenance costs …

Gas pains: Implemented properly, telecommuting can be win-Win

08/26/2008
During this period of high gas prices, telecommuting could help employees cut commuting costs. With the right kind of phone and computer equipment, many workers can do their jobs as effectively from home as they can from their usual work sites. Employers benefit from increased productivity and lower absenteeism, higher retention rates and better employee morale …

Is it legal to discipline an employee for tardiness by suspending her without pay?

08/26/2008
Q. I work in HR at a customer call-in center. To make sure we have enough coverage to handle calls, we have a strict tardiness policy. Recently, one of our customer service agents was late for work several days in a row. She is an otherwise outstanding performer and we don’t want to fire her. In the alternative, we would like to suspend her for one week without pay. Is that legal? …

Beware the Overtime Trap that Even Tripped up the Army

08/26/2008
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations say that certain kinds of "outside" salespeople are exempt from the FLSA’s overtime provisions. But to qualify as exempt, a salesperson must be the one who closes the sale. As  the following case shows—and as an Army recruiting contractor recently found out—that test can be a high hurdle.

Research, diligence, documentation key to making good-Faith FLSA classifications

08/25/2008
Under the FLSA, exempt employees don’t receive overtime pay. But figuring out just who fits in one of the exemptions is not an easy task. Get it wrong, and you could be liable for twice the overtime you should have paid, going back two years. Get it really wrong—by failing to act in good faith—and you’ll have to pay for an additional year. There’s a small silver lining behind that dark cloud …

Lower retirement pay doesn’t excuse late discrimination filing

08/22/2008
Employees who believe they have suffered pay discrimination have to move fast to file their claims. They can’t wait, for example, until after they retire and only then claim their retirement benefits are lower than they should be because they were discriminated against …

N.C. workers’ compensation may cover injury-related depression

08/22/2008

Employees who are hurt on the job sometimes become depressed because they can’t do the things they previously could. That depression may then complicate their recovery or even prevent them from getting better. The practical result is that employers and their workers’ compensation carriers will have to pay lost wages longer …