This is a fairly consistent question from employers today so I decided to rerun this post. There is an update at the end, however. The Fair Labor Standards Act tells us we have two types of employees, non-exempt and exempt. Unfortunately these terms are not very explanatory and people often get them confused. Let me …
Two employers learned a lesson in understanding the rules of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA requires that non-exempt employees receive overtime pay based on their “regular of pay”. Unfortunately, many employers don’t understand that term. Regular rate of pay is not the hourly figure that the employee was hired at, it is, as …
In a press release from early May, the USDOL announced that a conclusion had been reached in a case reaching back to 2009. According to the release: The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire has sentenced Kevin Corriveau, owner, and operator of Kevin Corriveau Painting Inc. of Nashua, to six months imprisonment; …
Read moreThe Penalties for Wage and Hour violations are NOT just fines!
I often get comments on my posts that are questions or pleas for help. I received on yesterday on the subject of comp time. As a result, I decided to republish this post from the past to explain how a private sector employer must handle employees who work overtime. One area of the Fair Labor …
Read more"Comp Time": A Big "No-No" in the Private Sector- From the Archive
Here is what happens when an employer engages in illegal wrongdoing with the Fair Labor Standards Act. They get fined $2 million! The guilty party The guilty party is a Mexican restaurant chain in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The owner was accused of the following, according to Erin Dougherty Foley and Craig Simonsen , of Seyfarth Shaw: …
Read moreThis is the kind of business owner that cartoons lampoon and employees hate
You read that right! That is $50 Billion, with a “B”, that American workers are losing on an annual basis. A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that American employers fail to pay their workers properly, with the resulting loss of this magnitude. Wage Theft In some circles these pay violations are considered to …
Read morePay Violations cost American Workers $50 BILLION per year
In case you haven’t heard the USDOL is getting tougher and tougher. Ask any attorney. The ones that defend companies will tell you how tough it is getting and the ones that sue you will just get a big grin. In Fair Labor Standards Act cases there is generally no intent that has to be …
When you read stories of the US Department of Labor visiting companies I am sure many of you think “Well that is a big company, they will never visit me, I am a small company.” I am here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. I know of a twenty person …
Read moreIt Will Cost Me How Much? A Story of Misclassification and Improper Deductions
In case you haven’t heard the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Divison, is encouraging your employees to report you. They are doing this several ways, including three timekeeping methods the encourage your employees to use. Of course this is nothing new. The Department of Labor has always been the instrument to investigate and …
Read moreTimekeeping Methods the USDOL Encourages Your Employees to Use
I participated in a webinar today about the FLSA and breaks and meal times. I have written about this before (see Breaks, Meal Times and the FLSA) so I am not going to repeat that information. In the discussion we were having I mentioned that employers needed to pay attention to recording break times because their employees …