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FLSA

Make choice up front: Employee or contractor

12/10/2010

Adding staff? Decide before you hire whether you want an employee or an independent contractor. Under the FLSA and some states’ laws, you must pay overtime to nonexempt employees—not so for independent contractors. Make the employee-or-contractor call well before you bring someone on board. Don’t assume you can make the designation later.

St. Louis Metro workers settle pre-, post-work OT suit

12/09/2010
Reservation clerks and dispatchers for the St. Louis Metro mass transit system have settled an overtime dispute for $175,000. The money will be split among approximately 100 workers. The St. Louis Metro serves the city and suburbs in Missouri and Illinois.

How should we tally overtime pay when employees earn different amounts at different times?

12/09/2010
Q. We have employees who work on-call and often accrue overtime hours. They receive a different amount of pay for on-call work than regularly scheduled work time. How do we calculate their regular rate of pay for overtime purposes?

When setting pay and bonus plans, take both federal and Minnesota laws into account

12/09/2010

A recent state Supreme Court decision highlights one of the unique problems facing employers: While a pay practice may be valid under state law, it may be illegal under federal law. To ensure they’re in full compliance, employers must be prepared to change their pay practices to conform with the most restrictive law.

It takes just a handful of workers to make a class action

12/06/2010
It’s every employer’s nightmare: A disgruntled former employee files a lawsuit alleging you didn’t pay overtime. Then he asks to turn it into a class action, representing other employees. Now a claim worth a few hundred dollars has turned into a major lawsuit.

Review duties, update job descriptions yearly to ensure employees are properly classified

12/02/2010

As job duties change, evolve or grow, make sure you regularly review employee responsibilities, update job descriptions to reflect the reality on the ground and determine if the job is properly classified as exempt or nonexempt. Don’t rely on an analysis that’s even a couple of years old—or even an analysis provided by the DOL itself.

Can we deduct pay from an exempt worker who takes FMLA leave? If so, how should we calculate it?

12/01/2010
Q. An exempt employee recently requested intermittent leave under the FMLA … FMLA leave at our company is unpaid. Can we deduct from the employee’s salary for absences of less than a day and still classify her as exempt? If so, how do we calculate how much FMLA time the employee is using?

Check pay policies for massive lawsuit threat–simple underpayment can quickly balloon

11/30/2010

Make a small mistake in how you pay hourly employees, and the stakes can be quite high. Individually, a wage-and-hour claim may amount to just a few hundred dollars. But multiply an underpayment as small as $350 by 1,000 employees and now you’re looking at a $700,000 tab–that’s because courts routinely double unpaid wage awards in FLSA cases.

Courts crack down on workers who wait years to sue

11/24/2010
Courts are losing patience with employees who think they can sue their employers years after alleged discrimination or harassment.

Management exemption looks at duties, not time

11/24/2010

Retail managers are generally responsible for everything that happens in their stores. But they often spend most of their time doing the same work that hourly employees do. Even so, they may qualify as exempt employees under the FLSA. It’s the quality of the management work they do that counts, not the number of hours they spend doing it.