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Wages & Hours

Automatic deductions for mealtime: Legal, but dangerous

04/01/2007

Take note if you automatically deduct meal periods from your hourly employees’ total hours worked: Although making that deduction isn’t technically illegal and doesn’t by itself violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, it’s a dangerous practice …

Johnnie Cochran’s law firm takes aim at poultry processors

04/01/2007

The Cochran Firm, founded by the late Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson-defense fame, has set its sights on the poultry-processing industry, filing lawsuits for back wages and other workplace violations …

Florida’s climate is right for overtime lawsuits; build your defense

04/01/2007

That dedicated employee working through her lunch period, even though she’s clocked out, could be a Florida employer’s biggest future liability …

State law prohibits dipping into employees’ tip pool

04/01/2007

New York employers in the restaurant industry need to be vigilant. The state’s minimum wage law places tight restrictions on how you divvy up money collected in a tip pool …

How to Comply With Federal Teen-Labor Rules

03/15/2007
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Use the right words to silence pay-Related gripes

03/01/2007

How do employees at your organization feel about their compensation? If the answer is “Not good,” a bit of explanation from you or their supervisors can calm those troubled waters and help reduce turnover …

Communicate payroll-Card benefits to help trim turnover

03/01/2007

When employees are "unbanked"—i.e., they don’t have bank accounts into which your organization can deposit their wages—they’re more likely to quickly jump ship for another job. To serve the nation’s 56 million citizens who don’t have traditional bank accounts, more organizations are using payroll cards, which are being credited with reducing turnover as well …

Do help-Desk workers qualify for the computer exemption?

03/01/2007

While the Fair Labor Standards Act says certain computer professionals are exempt employees, be ultra-cautious about applying this exemption. Courts are littered with cases of employers being punished for wrongly applying exempt status to lower-level IT workers, such as help-desk staff (aka “IT support specialists”) …

Results, not hours, are focus of Best Buy clock-Smashing plan

03/01/2007

At Best Buy headquarters in Richfield, Minn., leaving work early doesn’t trigger a guilt trip for employees, as long as their work is finished. The Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) initiative makes it possible …

Hiring interns: The 4 steps to keeping it legal

03/01/2007

Courts view interns the same as employees: as “agents” of your organization. So should you. If you use interns or plan to, advise supervisors to manage them as closely as employees, if not more so. And apply your workplace policies to them …