Overtime paid to non-exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act must be at time and one-half of the employee’s “regular rate.” The regular rate includes most compensation paid to the employee, such as bonuses and...more
Restaurants and some other businesses that use employees partially compensated by tips can claim a tip credit toward the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage requirements. However, the FLSA strictly regulates the servers’...more
The North Carolina Wage and Hour Act imposes liability on employers for failure to pay promised wages. The law is modeled after the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and like the FLSA, individual managers and officers of a...more
In order to claim most exemptions from overtime and minimum wage requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers must pay a guaranteed salary. Employers can only deduct from such salaries in very limited...more
Under the “hired to invent” doctrine, employees who develop intellectual property during the course of their employment generally have no ownership rights to such innovations. Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme...more
6/28/2016
/ Assignment of Inventions ,
Bonuses ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Failure To Pay ,
Hired To Invent Doctrine ,
IP Assignment Agreements ,
NC Supreme Court ,
Patent Ownership ,
Patents ,
Rescission ,
Reversal ,
Wage and Hour
On June 20, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to provide a definitive opinion on a pay issue that has concerned automobile dealerships for years. The question involves whether dealership service advisors fall under the...more
6/28/2016
/ Arbitrary and Capricious ,
Car Dealerships ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Navarro v Encino Motorcars ,
Over-Time ,
Sales Commissions ,
SCOTUS ,
Service Advisors ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
Earlier this month in McFeeley v. Jackson Street Entertainment, LLC, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina and South Carolina) concluded that exotic dancers were employees entitled to minimum...more
For more than a half-century, Department of Labor regulations issued under the Fair Labor Standards Act have allowed employers to adopt an administrative rounding policy to prevent situations where the employer would be...more
The Department of Labor’s new salary level of $47,476 for white collar employees exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act takes effect December 1. While the new rules more than double the current...more
On May 18, 2016, the federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued final regulations that dramatically increase the minimum salary required to claim exemption from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor...more
The Fair Labor Standards Act contains regulations explaining when time spent by new employees training for their jobs is compensable working time. In most circumstances, the employer must pay trainees for time spent learning...more
On March 23 following a one-day special session, the North Carolina General Assembly passed, and Governor McCrory signed HB 2, a bill that will have widespread effects on legal protections for employees in North Carolina. The...more
In its 2011 Dukes decision, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the circumstances under which groups of employees can maintain class action claims relating to their employment. In that case, the Court concluded that Wal-Mart...more
3/28/2016
/ Admissible Evidence ,
Calculation of Damages ,
Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Collective Actions ,
Commonality ,
Doffing ,
Donning ,
Dukes v Wal-Mart ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
SCOTUS ,
Statistical Sampling ,
Tyson Foods ,
Tyson Foods v Bouaphakeo ,
Wage and Hour
Earlier this month, financial companies won a victory in the long-standing battle over whether employees involved in mortgage originations and approvals are exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards...more
As litigation and administrative investigations of misclassification of employees for overtime purposes have grown, employers have increasingly turned to alternative methods of pay intended to reduce their overtime...more
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers to provide 60 days advance notice to employees of certain qualifying plant closings and mass layoffs. The WARN thresholds are based on...more
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina and South Carolina) is among the minority of federal appellate circuits that restricts the ability of employers and employees to release claims for unpaid...more
Federal Department of Labor regulations have long prohibited employers from requiring that servers, hostesses and bartenders pool a portion of their tips to share with other restaurant employees such as bussers and cooks. For...more
Over the past several years, the healthcare industry and Department of Labor have clashed over the application of the Professional exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime requirements to various...more
Earlier this year, the federal Department of Labor proposed an increase in the minimum salary required to claim exempt status from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime requirements under its Part 541 “white collar”...more
Employers seeking to avoid disputes in court with employees increasingly seek to use mandatory arbitration agreements. Typically, these agreements take the form of stand-alone written documents, signed by both parties....more
On September 7, President Obama signed an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to provide employees with a minimum of seven days of paid sick leave per year. The sick pay will be awarded at the rate of one hour for...more
The 60-day notice and comment period for the Department of Labor’s proposed changes to its Part 541 white collar overtime exemption rules has expired. The agency reports receiving over 200,000 comments to the proposed rules,...more
In a major defeat for the home health care industry, on August 21, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that had blocked issuance of an interpretation making thousands of currently exempt workers...more
Restaurants and some other hospitality industry employers often take advantage of a sub-minimum wage applicable to employees who receive tips as part of their income. In recent years, a number of these employers have been the...more