Here’s to hoping all our readers have a great New Year’s, but do not forget that the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is changing the threshold amount of salary necessary to meet the numerous overtime exemptions....more
Ever wonder what happened with the minimum wage fight that has been going on between Alabama and Birmingham? Well, here is the latest — the full panel on the Eleventh Circuit has now spoken: the district court rightly...more
When do your business relationships make you a joint employer? Fortunately, the DOL recently published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with changes to regulations regarding when two or more entities should be treated as...more
12/20/2019
/ Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Franchisee ,
Franchisors ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Independent Contractors ,
Joint Employers ,
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) ,
Proposed Rules ,
Subcontractors ,
Wage and Hour
In an important wage-and-hour decision for franchisors, Salazar, et al. v. the McDonald’s Corp., et al., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that employees of one of the hamburger giant’s California-based franchisees...more
10/2/2019
/ Class Action ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Fast-Food Industry ,
Franchises ,
Franchisors ,
Joint Employers ,
McDonalds ,
State Labor Laws ,
Summary Judgment ,
Wage and Hour
Yesterday, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued a final rule regarding the threshold amount of salary necessary to exempt an employer from the obligation to pay overtime. The threshold since 2004 was $455...more
9/25/2019
/ Bonuses ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Final Rules ,
Highly Compensated Employees ,
Incentive Compensation ,
Minimum Salary ,
Over-Time ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
Sometimes employment laws can make the common person’s head spin. That certainly could be the case for a recent Fifth Circuit opinion examining the “highly compensated” regulatory exemption from the overtime requirements of...more
9/5/2019
/ Appeals ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employment Litigation ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Highly Compensated Employees ,
Independent Contractors ,
Minimum Salary ,
Over-Time ,
Summary Judgment ,
Unpaid Overtime ,
Wage and Hour
The EEOC’s revised EEO-1 form, which now includes employee pay data, must be filed for covered employers for calendar years 2017 and 2018 by September 30, 2019. Remember that EEO-1 forms are required of all employers with 100...more
When is sleeping working? According to a recent DOL Opinion Letter, probably not when it occurs off duty in a sleeper berth of an over-the-road truck.
A trucker’s job is to haul a load from Point A to Point B, which often...more
In setting a new employee’s pay, what do you consider? Past experience? Check. Education? Check. Salary at the last job? Not so fast. In a recent Ninth Circuit decision, the court framed the question as follows:
Can an...more
When you promote someone into a position, do you have to pay him what you paid his predecessor? As with so many things – it depends. Can you pay less if the promotee has less experience and a lower prior salary than the...more
2/28/2018
/ Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Equal Pay Act ,
Gender Discrimination ,
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Reversal ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Summary Judgment ,
Title VII ,
Wage and Hour
Before everyone gets out of the office to their various homes and families to celebrate the holiday, we wanted to review the year and count our blessings. Not only are we thankful that our families and colleagues in our...more
11/22/2017
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Decriminalization of Marijuana ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Drug Testing ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Independent Contractors ,
Joint Employers ,
Marijuana ,
Medical Leave ,
NLRB ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Sexual Assault ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Social Media Policy ,
Wage and Hour
Managing intermittent FMLA is every employer’s nightmare (or is it just me?). Employees are entitled to take leave and operations folks find it difficult to keep the trains running on time with employees who don’t show up...more
Setting a new employee’s pay based on what he or she made at a prior job is a fairly common practice—but now an illegal one in Philadelphia, PA. You heard right, Philadelphia has banned questions about salary history. This...more
The wait is over and the new overtime regulations are finally here. Although it will take some time to digest the more than 500 pages of the Final Rule, based on the DOL’s fact sheet, here is what you need to know...more
For those of you wondering when the Department of Labor’s (DOL) new overtime salary basis thresholds will become effective, we are one step closer to an answer. This week the DOL submitted the rules to the Office of...more
Birmingham, Alabama is poised to join more than 15 cities across the country that have adopted a municipal minimum wage higher than the federal requirement. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour but, unless the...more
For anyone following the employee versus independent contractor battles, Uber just scored in Florida. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) says Uber drivers are independent contractors and are not entitled to...more
Minimum wage laws across the country are changing. Although the federal minimum wage for covered, nonexempt employees is $7.25 an hour (and has been since July 2009), 22 states increased their minimum wages for 2015. The new...more