A recent post appearing on U.S. Labor Department's blog begins, "The federal tipped minimum wage has been $2.13/hour since 1991. That's right - it's been the same for nearly a quarter century." Actually, that's wrong....more
On January 28, the Economic Policy Institute announced that "noted economists and a former Secretary of Labor" had written to U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez to propose an increased salary threshold of around $960 a week...more
"Fluctuating workweek" pay plans are provoking much litigation under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. These arrangements call for a non-exempt employee to be paid a salary as straight-time compensation for all hours...more
The answer to our September 22, 2014 Quick Quiz is, "Yes, even though the payments are not tied to the on-call hours he works." In declining percentage order, the responses were...more
A White House report has extoled wage-rate increases by "state legislatures and governors; mayors, county executives and city councils; and business leaders" as supposedly being compelling reasons to raise the federal Fair...more
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Claims underscores important propositions under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to the effect that:
- Failing to pay non-exempt employees the FLSA-required minimum-wage or...more
"Wage-hour lawsuits are booming," trumpets one recent report after another, and this is certainly true. The risk of high-exposure wage claims against an employer is greater than ever.
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A decision by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (with jurisdiction over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) illustrates and exacerbates the utter and unwarranted morass into which the calculation of overtime pay has...more
We reported in July that the U.S. Labor Department had launched a "Fair Labor Data Challenge" asking application developers to create "an innovative tool that lets an informed consumer find out if a business is obeying the...more
Employers sometimes pay workers more than the federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires. Of course, some do so as a matter of choice.
However, in other situations, this happens because management misunderstands what...more
A recent $4 million settlement between the U.S. Labor Department and a Texas healthcare employer highlights a recurring overtime issue under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
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A statement of some federal-law limitations and requirements relating to the increasingly popular practice of compensating employees via the use of "pay cards" came from an atypical direction on September 12....more
In 2011, the U.S. Labor Department did its best to discourage the use of fluctuating-workweek pay plans under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. It undertook this in a grab-bag release collectively titled "Final Rule",...more
Our Quick Quiz Answer discussing day-rate plans led one reader to observe that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act does not always bar employers from paying non-exempt employees a fixed sum that "builds in" some FLSA...more
We’ve warned clients for some time now that businesses and other organizations should think carefully if they are considering the possibility of permitting unpaid internships. What might be described as the internship...more
There has always been a great deal of mistaken conventional wisdom afoot where the federal Fair Labor Standards Act is concerned. We have blogged previously about the common misconception that one pay practice or another has...more
The Big Corporation decides that it will start paying its Field Service Technicians on a day-rate basis, instead of on an hourly basis. Under the day-rate plan, a Technician will now receive a fixed amount of money for each...more
Recent reports have described more than one scenario in which an employer violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act because the employer failed to recognize that non-exempt employees' hours worked over 40 were overtime...more