• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

FLSA

Under what circumstances must we pay interns?

09/09/2008

Q. My company would like to hire several college students as interns to work on special projects. Because the work has educational value, we are wondering if the internships can be unpaid. Can we do this? …

Does docking pay affect FLSA status?

09/05/2008
Q. I recently docked one of my salaried employees’ pay for damage he caused to his company vehicle. My HR director said that by doing so, we might have made the employee eligible for overtime pay. Is this true? …

Fee-Basis pay to maintain overtime exemption

09/05/2008
Q. Are there any alternatives to paying employees on a salary basis and having them remain exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act? …

What’s up in Washington: Minimum wage, child labor penalties

09/02/2008

Two key federal laws have changed, affecting how employers handle wage-and-hour issues. A new federal minimum wage went into effect in July, and civil penalties for child-labor law violations increased in May. Here is a summary of each development …

Calculating overtime when the workweek doesn’t correspond to pay periods

09/02/2008

Q. We pay our workers every two weeks. How should we calculate overtime? …

Grant maternity leave just as generously as you do other leave

09/02/2008
When it comes to maternity or childbirth leave, women have at least two federal laws that protect them from possible discrimination: the FMLA and the Pregnancy Discimination Act. Employers who understand that the FMLA and the PDA work together aren’t likely to make mistakes that result in lawsuits …

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? …

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 …

Employ teens? Child-Labor fines, enforcement on the rise

08/21/2008
Buried in the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed this year was a little-noticed provision that substantially increased the potential fines against employers that violate federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) child-labor laws. If employees under age 18 are killed or seriously hurt due to an FLSA child-labor violation, employers can now face a $50,000 fine for each violation