Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
In today’s economic climate, companies are continually looking for ways to cut costs without cutting jobs and resorting to layoffs. One option many companies are considering is mandatory unpaid time off, sometimes referred to as an employee furlough. By requiring mandatory unpaid time off, companies can reduce payroll expenses by reducing the number of hours […]
As employers know, certain employees aren’t entitled to overtime pay under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The most common exemptions include the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions. Because the administrative exemption is more nebulous than the executive and professional exemptions, employers often misclassify non-exempt workers as exempt administrative employees. Although it should be […]
Yesterday’s Advisor answered some quirky questions on overtime. Here are several more, plus an introduction to a wage and hour audit system that will help you spot problems before the feds do. Do we have to pay employees who clock in early?Is it legal for us to refuse to pay hourly employees straight time or […]
Wage and hour ought to be simple, but our customers keep coming up with new twists. How many of these questions cover situations you face in your organization? Do I have to pay overtime on paid lunch breaks?Our workweek is 35 hours, plus we pay lunch breaks of 1 hour each day, totaling 40 hours […]
Happy New Year, readers. Here’s one resolution that you can easily keep—to audit your exemptions and pay practices (before the feds make good on their resolution to do it for you). If yours is like most organizations, you’ll get the biggest bang for your New Year’s buck with an FLSA audit. The astounding amounts of […]
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) estimates that almost 70 percent of employers aren’t in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Lawyers who represent employees are well aware that most employers aren’t compliant, as evidenced by a significant increase in FLSA claims. In fact, wage and hour claims, including collective actions, have increased […]
Today we look at misclassification—the third of “The Big Three” compensation challenges (see yesterday’s Advisor for the other two)—and a new in-depth audio conference series that will answer the tricky technical questions about exemptions. Misclassification can lead to big-bucks fines and lawsuits. First, if you’ve misclassified one employee as exempt, you’ve probably misclassified many others […]
Wage and hour just shouldn’t be that hard, but the lawsuits keep coming, and the dollar amounts are staggering—especially when class actions amplify fees, fines, and judgments. What’s the problem? A number of factors make wage and hour a challenge: Many of the decisions about overtime, break time, meal time, and hours of work are […]
Is the CEO owed overtime? Absolutely, says attorney Phillip Russell. Every employee must be paid overtime unless he or she falls into one of the exemption classifications. While it is hard to imagine a non-exempt CEO, Russell was making the important point that job title alone does not determine whether an employee is exempt. Russell […]
There’s a new breed of plaintiff lawyer out there, says attorney Phillip Russell, and they are not looking for the companies with 1,000 employees—they’re happy to find 10 or 15 employees working off the clock or due unpaid overtime. Russell is a member of the Tampa, Florida, office of national employment law firm Constangy, Brooks […]