A federal court of appeals has ruled that the Department of Labor can infer workers’ hours from limited information when the employer fails to keep required records. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), an employer’s lack of record-keeping can be...
Federal Wage and Hour Violations
Federal Wage and Hour Violations
Federal Court: 40-Year Newspaper Deliverer Is Legally An Employee
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, certain workers can be considered legally employees even if they were brought on as independent contractors. The main issue for the courts is whether the worker has significant control over the details and performance of the...
Are All Computer Employees Exempt From Overtime Under The FLSA?
No. If you are an employee working in a computer-related occupation such as computer programming, systems analysis or software engineering, you may have been told you are not entitled to overtime pay under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). That is not...
Should Employers Have To Pay For Post-Shift Security Checks?
An interesting case recently arose in the courts. In 2013, two workers from Apple stores in New York and Los Angeles filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Apple. The claim was that they were not being paid for all the hours they had worked. Apple store...
New Salary Threshold For Overtime Exemption In Effect On Jan. 1
The Department of Labor has issued a new rule on who qualifies as exempt from overtime. Classifying a worker as exempt requires identifying a specific exemption, such as the executive, administrative, learned professional, computer employee or outside sales...
Wage Theft Could Amount To $15 Billion Each Year, Nationwide
In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute did a study of wage theft in the 10 most populous states. The group estimated that 2.4 million people each year lose a total of $8 billion to thefts by their employers. That $8 billion, which again only represents 10 states, was...
Labor Department Issues New Rule On Calculating Overtime Rates
In general, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires all covered, non-exempt workers to be paid 1-1/2 times their regular rate of pay as an overtime premium whenever they work more than 40 hours in a given workweek. This leads to the question, what is the...
DOL Issues 3 New Opinion Letters On Wage And Hour Compliance
The U.S. Department of Labor recently issued three new opinion letters on overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Opinion letters cover specific fact situations presented by employers, workers or other parties and are only legally binding on the party who...
Beyond The DOL, IRS Is Also Scrutinizing Employee Classification
With the "gig economy" in full swing, state and federal agencies have an incentive to scrutinize whether workers are properly classified as independent contractors or employees. After all, employers are not responsible for paying half of an independent contractor's...
DOL Expected To Clarify How FLSA Overtime Rates Are Determined
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees are entitled to the premium overtime rate of 1-1/2 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked past 40 in a single workweek. The regular rate of pay is determined by adding up all earnings,...