Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
For more than 70 years, the Fair Labor Standards Act has allowed employers to pay some workers with physical or mental impairments less than the federal minimum wage. H.R. 3086, introduced by Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) and Gregg Harper (R-Mo.) earlier this fall, would change that. HR 3086 would phase out special wage […]
Federal investigators fined an Arkansas farm $8,000 for illegally hiring a 10-year old to pick blueberries and for other wage and hour violations . The Labor Department also has recovered $1,160 in back wages for four of the farm’s workers. “The laws and regulations for vulnerable young workers are very specific, and employers in violation […]
It’s a sobering realization, says attorney Kara Shea, that DOL statistics show 73 percent of its investigations result in findings of violations, but you can push the odds in your favor. Shea, who is a member of Nashville-based law firm Miller & Martin PLLC, made her remarks at BLR’s Advanced Employment Issues Symposium, held recently […]
Huddle House, Inc. has agreed to pay more than $60,000 to 128 employees and to step up compliance with wage and hour laws. In addition, Labor Department officials assessed $48,317 in civil money penalties for repeat and child labor violations. The Labor’s wage and hour investigations were initiated under a multiyear enforcement initiative focused on […]
Employers have until Dec. 1 to comment on the (DOL)’s proposed child labor regulations for the agricultural sector. That’s one month longer than the original deadline of Nov. 1. The extension was published in the Federal Register Oct. 31. Released Sept. 2, these are DOL’s first revisions to child farm labor rules in 40 years. […]
A Hilton subsidiary has agreed to pay more than $715,000 in back wages to 2,645 workers in four states. The agreement comes in the wake of a Labor Department investigation into the handling of payment for work done before the start of a shift. Nonpayment of pre-shift work at heart of DOL investigation Hilton “profited […]
Two new California state laws, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown Oct. 9, raise the stakes for companies that violate the state’s wage and hour laws. Assembly Bill No. 459, among the latest move by feds and the states to crack down on independent contractor abuse, prohibits willful misclassification of employees as independent contractors. The law […]
Companies that wrongly pay workers as independent contractors, rather than employees, strip workers of benefits and protections and put responsible employers at a competitive disadvantage, according to Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., who this week proposed increasing penalties on employers found to have misclassified workers. Woolsey’s bill, The Misclassification Prevention Act, (HR 3178) is the most […]
Unless they protect themselves, employers using unpaid interns risk running afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act and state labor laws. Indie movie spinoff Fox Searchlight (a division of Twentieth Century Fox) has been slapped with a lawsuit by two interns who worked on the set of the award-winning film, Black Swan. In Eric Glatt […]
A federal court has ordered the City of Pittsburgh to pay $825,000 in liquidated damages alone to more than 900 municipal police officers. (O’Hara v. City of Pittsburgh.) The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania made the award following a five-year delay by the city in implementing a 2006 letter of understanding […]