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It’s hard to believe many of us have been working from home because of the COVID-19 outbreak for more than a year. In addition, many teleworkers have been operating on flexible schedules. The consistent question for employers is: How do we pay nonexempt employees working flexible schedules from home? Here is the answer (at least […]
Most Massachusetts employers are required by law to provide “meal breaks” for their employees. However, in many industries, it isn’t always feasible for employees to leave the premises during lunch or even to stop working while they’re eating. If employees work through their meal breaks, must they be paid for that time? What if they […]
Question: My employer uses a “4 -minute rule,” meaning that our employees have an 8-minute window (4 before and 4 after their scheduled time to clock in) without changes being made to their time cards. We do this because there’s a line waiting to clock in. However, for those who are more than the 4 […]
Question: Can we require employees to be at work 15 minutes prior to their normal scheduled start time to ensure they are at and prepared to work when scheduled, while also avoid paying overtime?
by Connor Beatty Ask anyone with a long daily commute, and he will agree that it certainly feels like the workday begins long before he steps inside the front doors of the workplace each morning. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), commuting time is not considered working time, although there are a number of […]
Smartphone use has complicated employer calculations of working time and overtime for years, and it now appears to have caught the interest of the U.S. Department of Labor, which recently announced plans to collect information on how the use of smartphones impacts hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In its spring 2015 regulatory […]
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Oct. 6 that it would not review two Fair Labor Standards Act rulings. The cases dealt with misclassification and compensable working time. In the misclassification case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the City of Los Angeles owed fire department dispatchers and paramedics assigned to air ambulance […]
The arrival of cooler weather heralds the end of daylight saving time and a potential Fair Labor Standards Act challenge for employers with employees who work a graveyard shift. This year, daylight saving time ends on Nov. 3, and most states will set the clocks back one hour beginning at 2 a.m. Employees working the […]
If an employee who typically works a Monday through Friday schedule, travels out of town on a Sunday to attend a training that will be held on Monday, is the employee entitled to be paid for the time he/she is out traveling? This great question from a customer highlights a perpetual issue for employers: What […]