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Wages & Hours

Shift assignment is your call, not the employee’s

05/01/2005

Q. We’re looking to switch an employee to a different shift, which will better serve the entire shift. Can we force an employee to change shifts even if he’s not interested? —K.C., New York

5 ways to improve your shift-work schedule

05/01/2005
Issue: The night-shift population is rising, and shift workers are logging more overtime hours.
Risk: Those dual trends damage productivity, causing more accidents and hurting employees’ health, all of which …

No need to send ‘questionable’ W-4s to IRS

05/01/2005
You no longer need to send in copies of suspicious W-4 withholding forms to the IRS. In the past, employers had to send the IRS copies of W-4s for employees who …

You can adjust salaries based on occasional business ups and downs

04/01/2005
Employees must be paid on a “salary basis” to be declared exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In the past, some employers tried to evade that …

High court to answer ‘donning’ and ‘doffing’ questions

04/01/2005
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to take up cases that could affect your payroll practices under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), particularly if you employ people who must …

Office business manager: Exempt or nonexempt?

04/01/2005

Q. We’re a nine-physician medical clinic, and we employ a salaried business manager. She makes less than $100,000 but more than $23,660 per year. Her duties include personnel, hiring and firing, and office work. We don’t give her comp time or overtime pay. If she takes a partial day off, she must use vacation time (paid time off). In light of the new (FLSA, overtime) rules, are we handling this correctly? —B.B., Missouri

Paying men more than women with the same job titles?

04/01/2005
Issue: As a new ruling shows, a female’s job must be “virtually identical” to a male’s to support an equal-pay lawsuit.
Benefit: You don’t have to fear paying different wages …

Where your religious-accommodation responsibilities stop

04/01/2005
Issue: How far must you go to oblige an employee’s religious practices under federal job-discrimination law?
Benefit: A new ruling says that you don’t need to accommodate religious requests when …

Monthly pay is OK, but keep payday consistent

04/01/2005

Q. Doesn’t federal law say employees must be paid within two weeks of completing their work, no matter the excuse (computer glitch, etc.)? —A.L., Virginia

Shifting to paid-time-off plan? You’re not alone

04/01/2005
In an effort to minimize employee-absence costs, more employers are dumping traditional absence policies in favor of paid time-off (PTO) plans. Such plans lump together time-off benefits (sick days, vacation days, …