How Can Wage/Hour Bring Us Down? How Hard Is It?

[Go here for failures 1 to 3]
4. Providing inaccurate or falsified payroll records to the government

Obviously, providing falsified records is not a wise practice. However, many submitted records are merely inaccurate. In fact, most experts state that probably no organization has perfect pay records. But there are common problems that you can watch out for:

• Clock in and clock out procedures, including especially rounding rules that favor the company and not the employee.
• Automatic deductions for meal periods. Problems tend to occur when an employee works through part or all of the meal period, but the time tracking system deducts the time. For example, if employees are taking phone calls during lunch, they are probably working.
• Changes made by supervisors and not checked or initialed by employees.

5. Failing to keep accurate records of hours employees worked

Records must be detailed. For example, “8 hours” today is not enough. Note time in, time out for lunch, time in from lunch, and time out at the end of the day. Have employees sign that their time card or other record is “an accurate and full accounting of hours worked for the period.”

6. Failing to pay for all hours employees worked

As was mentioned in yesterday’s Advisor, this failure usually arises from people taking work home or being requested to work before clocking in or after clocking out.

One important point: If employees do work extra hours, you have to pay them, even if you have specified that they can’t work extra hours without permission. (You can discipline them for doing the work, but you still have to pay them for it.)

One new twist here is the rise of cell phone/e-mail use outside of work hours. If non-exempt employees are answering phone calls or dealing with e-mail off hours for more than a de minimus amount of time, they are probably working and need to be paid for those hours.

Finally, a simple but comprehensive guide to wage and hour. Correctly apply the FLSA, remain the go-to expert with BLR’s comprehensive guide. Save hours of research time.  Go here for information or to order Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR

7. Improperly classifying employees, resulting in the underpayment of wages and fringe benefits

Misclassification (calling employees exempt who should be classified as non-exempt) is a sticky problem. There is a lot of grey area in the supervisory ranks. The general rule is that it’s better to sort out these difficulties before work begins. After the fact, there are lawsuits, class actions, and other expensive challenges to be dealt with.

Finally, remember that in addition to Wage and Hour Division fines, for government contractors there is the added threat of debarment.

Classification, hours of work—wage and hour should be simple, but it just isn’t. Even the most savvy practitioners get tripped up, and there’s a throng of lawyers waiting to take you on.

Fortunately, there’s help—Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR provides you with detailed guidance on how to comply with the FLSA and takes you through the most complicated wage & hour issues that HR practitioners encounter.

When you’re faced with a supervisor’s travel time question, an employee’s request for comp time, another executive’s suggestion that more assistant managers be deemed exempt from overtime, you’ll find answers in seconds, from a reputable and reliable source.

Wage and hour lawsuits are expensive—and easily prevented. Here’s how to protect against crippling judgments. Go here for information or to order Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR

Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR features:

• Real-world examples of wage & hour challenges, and how to solve them
• Multiple quizzes, so you can see where you need to review more carefully
• An overtime exemption audit checklist, so you never make the wrong call
• State-specific charts, for comparing your multi-state obligations
• Sample policies, easily modified to fit your specific preferences
• A quarterly newsletter, Wage & Hour Compliance Bulletin, to keep you aware of the latest developments in the law, and why they matter to you.

BONUS! Not just a manual. You also get:

• Free CD-ROM containing over 20 forms, policies, checklists, state-by-state comparison charts and more, all so you can point, click and go.

Why are aggressive attorneys so eager to file claims on behalf of employees? Because there’s so much money to be made:

• $4.75 million: Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California settles wage and hour lawsuit over miscalculated overtime pay and failing to compensate workers for missed meal and rest periods.
• $1.15 million: Las Vegas construction company to pay in back wages to 1,060 current and former employees.
• $976,327: New Mexico aerospace company settles with 900 employees who were routinely required to work through lunch breaks without compensation.
• $340,400: New Jersey convenience store to pay back wages and damages for violations of overtime and recordkeeping.
• $84,541: New York physical therapist agrees to pay 22 employees for minimum wage violations
• $30,000: Texas chain of four gas stations to pay their six hourly employees, again for recordkeeping and overtime violations.

Avoid steep fines. Go here for information or to order Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR.

Buyers’ Benefit: To make sure your Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR remains current with changing interpretations and court decisions, we monitor courts, Congress, and state legislatures. Each year, we’ll rush you an updated edition and bill on a 30-day review basis. You pay only if you decide to keep the updated edition.

Stay up to date with wage/hour changes. Go here for information or to order Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR.