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FLSA

FLSA: Overtime and Base-Rate Pay

01/25/2014

HR Law 101: Employers must pay overtime to nonexempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a single workweek. The overtime rate is one and a half times an employee’s hourly rate. If an employee earns a fixed hourly rate with no other compensation, computing the base rate is easy. But in many cases, it’s not so simple …

Unpaid internships could be very expensive for employers

01/24/2014

By some estimates, more than a million people participate in internships each year in the United States, as many as half of them unpaid or for less than the minimum wage. That can be a problem for em­­ployers: Misclassifying employees as unpaid interns can result in costly litigation, civil fines or both.

Do we have to pay for time driving between offices?

01/20/2014
Q. Some of our employees leave the office at night with supplies. Then they drive to another office the next day (40 minutes away) with those supplies. What is the correct way to pay them for this?

Class action settlements fell sharply in 2013

01/10/2014
Advantage employers! A new legal landscape is working against employees who file work-related class-action suits, following key U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Result: 2013 class-action settlements were lower than since 2006.

Make sure your pay policies properly address meal breaks

01/08/2014
Paying employees for break time—or not paying them—is one of the trickiest aspects of wage-and-hour law compliance. Know your obligations!

AG announces partnership to combat misclassification

01/08/2014

Attorney General Eric T. Schneider­­man has signed a memorandum of understanding that allows his office to cooperate with both the federal and New York Departments of Labor to battle worker misclassification.

Condé Nast ends internships

01/08/2014
Condé Nast, publisher of The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ and 26 other magazines, has stopped offering unpaid internships following legal fallout from 2012’s “Black Swan” lawsuit.

MCM Grande & MCM Elegante pay $79,000 in back wages

01/07/2014
A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation has resulted in the MCM Grande and MCM Elegante hotels paying back wages and missed overtime to em­­ployees at several of its locations in Texas and New Mexico.

Words matter at work: Beware these 5 ‘lightning rod’ terms

01/07/2014
Layoff or firing? Probationary or permanent em­­ployee? Using the wrong employment-related terminology with an employee can expose your company to costly lawsuits.

Can we withhold double the cost of unreturned equipment from employee’s final paycheck?

01/03/2014
Q. Our employee handbook states, “If you do not return a piece of property we will withhold from your final paycheck the cost of replacing that piece of property.” One of our employees recently quit on the spot. My boss wants to almost double the actual replacement cost of the item. Can we do this?