Best Holiday Wishes from all of us at the HR Daily Advisor!
Rafael, Amanda, Denise, Steve, Meredith, Allison, Paul
The failures of a major construction company make a great checklist of legal infractions every company should strive to avoid. (Not to mention avoiding the near-$1,000,000 fine the company will pay to settle the case.)
DOL’s action against Lettire Construction Corp., which was punctuated by the substantial fine, was based on the seven failures listed below.
1. Failure to insure that subcontractors follow the law
DOL’s action against sent a strong message that general contractors are responsible not only for their own violations of federal labor law, but also for those committed by their subcontractors.
In a more general sense, that message really goes for all employers—just because you’ve outsourced some activity, you haven’t relieved your company of its legal obligations.
2. Employees working more than 60 hours per week without proper payment
The most egregious problem with workers who work over 40 hours a week (not necessarily the workers in the Littire case) is failure to pay at all for all hours worked. It’s not unusual to find workers who are paid for 40 or 50 hours but essentially forced to work 60 hours.
The worst cases typically involve entry-level workers who have few if any other options for employment.
The other common infraction in this category is failure to pay overtime, which must be paid on all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
3. Failure to pay required prevailing wages
Prevailing wage is generally interpreted as the union wage for the area. Of course, any overtime earned must be paid at the prevailing wage rate.
Compensation.BLR.com, now thoroughly revamped with easier navigation and more complete compensation information, will tell you what’s being paid right in your state—or even metropolitan area—for hundreds of jobs. Try it at no cost and get a complimentary special report. Read more.
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 admit that probably no organization has perfect pay records.
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
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 time frame, they are probably working and need to be paid for those hours.
7. Improperly classifying employees, resulting in the underpayment of wages and fringe benefits.
Misclassifying (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.
Failure to pay? Overtime? Prevailing wage?Mobile devices after hours—the list of compensation-realted challenges just gets longer and longer.
“Maintain internal equity and external competitiveness and control turnover, but keep costs down.” Heard that one before? Many of the professionals we serve find helpful answers to all their compensation questions at Compensation.BLR.com, BLR’s comprehensive compensation website.
And there’s great news: The site has just been revamped in two important ways. First, compliance focus information has been updated to include the latest on COBRA, Lilly Ledbetter, and FMLA. Second, user features are enhanced to make the site even quicker to respond to your particular needs:
- Topics Navigator—Lets you drill down by topical areas to get to the right data fast.
- Customizable Homepage—Can be configured to display whatever content you want to see most often.
- Menu Navigation—Displays all of the main content areas and tools that you need in a simple, easy format.
- Quick Links—Enables you to quickly navigate to all the new and updated content areas.
The services provided by this unique tool include:
- Localized Salary Finder. Based on reliable research among thousands of employers, here are pay scales (including 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles) for hundreds of commonly held jobs, from line worker to president of the company. The data are customized for your state and metro area, your industry, and your company size, so you can base your salaries on what’s offered in your specific market, not nationally.
Try BLR’s all-in-one compensation website, Compensation.BLR.com, and get a complimentary special report, Top 100 FLSA Overtime Q&As, no matter what you decide. Find out more.
- State and Federal Wage-Hour and Other Legal Advice. Plain-English explanations of wage-hour and other compensation and benefits-related law at both federal and state levels. “State” means the laws of your state because the site is customized to your use. (Other states can be added at a modest extra charge.)
- Job Descriptions. The website provides them by the hundreds, already written, legally reviewed, and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandate that essential job functions be separated from those less critical. All descriptions carry employment grade levels to current norms—another huge time-saver.
- Merit Increase, Salary, and Benefits Surveys. The service includes the results of three surveys a year. Results for exempt and nonexempt employees are reported separately.
- Daily Updates. Comp and benefits news updated daily (as is the whole site).
- “Ask the Experts” Service. E-mail a question to our editors and get a personalized response within 3 business days.
If we sound as if we’re excited about the program, it’s because we are. For about $3 a working day, the help it offers to those with compensation responsibilities is enormous.
This one’s definitely worth a look, which you can get by clicking the links below.
Click here to get more information or start a no-cost trial and get a complimentary special report!