Wait, not this kind of stripping? |
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Tread carefully if stripping employees of their pay
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
12 myths about independent contractor misclassification
-
Earlier this week, the Department of Labor published a new web guide on the issue of independent contractor misclassifications. The DOL’s tagline, “Misclassification Affects Everyone”, along with the comprehensive content contained therein, makes it clear that this issue remains hot for the agency.
- Contained the guide is a document entitled, “Myths About Misclassification”, listing 12 myths the DOL believes businesses commonly hold about independent contractors.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Santa Claus and child labor laws
While I was watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with my family something struck me. The elves working in Santa’s Workshop manufacturing the toys looked awfully young. Is it possible that the North Pole lacks child labor laws? Is this how Santa keeps his costs down? After all, he needs toys for more than half a billion children.
So, what are Ohio’s child labor laws?
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Ohio set to maintain stable statewide minimum wage
Sub. S.B. 331 [pdf] is a reaction to efforts of the “Fight for 15” movement to create piecemeal minimum wage increases city by city. Recall that earlier this year, Ohio’s attorney general issued an advisory opinion that a municipal ordinance may not require an employer to by a to pay its employees an hourly minimum wage rate that is in excess of the statewide hourly minimum wage rate,which is fixed by Ohio’s Constitution. This bill clears up an ambiguity over this issue.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Monday, December 5, 2016
A $15 minimum wage is not without consequences #fightfor15
The “Fight for 15” movement is taking notice:
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
With the new overtime rules DOA, what now for employers?
Yesterday I promised myself a blogging vacation until after the Thanksgiving holiday. And then Judge Amos L. Mazzant III dropped the biggest employment law story of the year by enjoining the DOL’s new overtime rules.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
BREAKING: Federal judge grants nationwide preliminary injunction against FLSA overtime rule
Consider this the judicial equivalent of a Hail Mary, or full-court buzzer beater, or a bottom-of-the-9th, 2-out grand slam.
Judge Amos L. Mazzant III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has just issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the DOL’s impending December 1 change to the FLSA’s white-collar salary test.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Dropping some wage and hour wisdom on turkey giveaways
One law firm for which I used to work provided each staff member an annual Thanksgiving turkey as a holiday thank you to its employees. With the hindsight of two decades of employment-law experience, here’s my question—should the fair market value of that turkey been included in the employees’ regular rate of pay? Because if it was, the company would have to include its value in the calculation of employees’ overtime rates.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
What happens to the new FLSA salary test under President Trump?
The one employment-law question I’ve been asked most since waking up last Wednesday to the reality that The Donald will be The President (aside from, “How did this happen,” and for that I direct you to John Oliver’s excellent 30-minute soliloquy of an answer from his Sunday night HBO program—warning, language NSFW) is, “Does this mean that the new FLSA salary test won’t go into effect?”
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Monday, November 7, 2016
We measure salaries for FLSA exemptions weekly, not annually
An article entitled, “Obama overtime-pay rule prompts changes, requires loans, as Ohio universities adapt,” which ran last week on Cleveland.com, caught my eye. The articles discusses how universities are struggling with the impending salary-test change to the FLSA’s various overtime exemptions.
The article links to a communication plan published by the University of Cincinnati [pdf], discussing how the new salary test will impact its salaried employees. This is what the university is telling its employees:
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Don’t forget the fluctuating workweek for your salaried nonexempt employees
Are you still struggling with how to handle your currently exempt employees who, one month from today, will earn less than $913 per week? If you have a salaried employee, no matter what they do on a day-to-day basis, if he or she earn less than $913 per week, beginning December 1 that employee will be non-exempt no matter what.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Feds publish a Halloween trick for employers
Have you seen Worker.gov? It is a how-to manual for employees to file charges with the full gauntlet of federal labor-and-employment agencies―EEOC, NLRB, OSHA, and DOL Wage-and-Hour Division.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Lawsuit highlights the risk of unpaid training time
Employment Law 360 reports that Hawaiian Airlines has been sued by a group of employees claiming that their mandatory unpaid 10-day customer service training course violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to court papers, trainees learned things like federal regulatory requirements and how to use a standard airline software system. … The suit claimed the Fair Labor Standards Act and state law required trainees be paid at least minimum wage “because, among other things, attendance was mandatory, the course material was related to the trainee’s job, and attendance was during regular working hours.”
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Court rules employers cannot take overtime credit for paid lunches
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require paid lunches for employees. Indeed, quite to the contrary, the FLSA provides that meal breaks (presumptively defined as breaks of more than 20 minutes during which the employee is totally relieved of his or her work duties) can be unpaid.
What happens, however, to an employee’s overtime compensation if the employer pays an employee for non-working lunches? Is the employer entitled to use the extra compensation for the paid lunches to offset other overtime compensation?
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Why the DOL’s federal contractor paid sick leave rules matter for all employers
Last week, the Department of Labor rolled out its final regulations mandating paid sick leave for the employees of federal contractors. According to the DOL, Once fully implemented, more than one million employees of federal contractors will be covered. At the highest of levels, the rule mandates that covered workers earn up to 56 hours (7 work days) of paid sick leave annually. Notably, the rule does not apply retroactively, and only applies to new federal contracts and replacements for expiring contracts on or after January 1, 2017.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
When is December 1 not December 1? When two lawsuits challenge the new overtime rules.
On December 1, the Department of Labor’s new salary test for exempt employees is set to take effect, raising the salary level to qualify for certain white collar overtime exemptions from $455 per week to $913 per week.
That is, it is set to take effect if the two lawsuits filed yesterday don’t delay or outright stop the rules from taking effect.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
The NLRB is now basically creating unfair labor practices out of thin air
Image via forbes.com |
The latest on the NLRB’s hit list: employee mis-classifications. The NLRB has concluded that an employer has committed an unfair labor practice and violated an employee’s section 7 rights by (mis)classifying its employees as independent contractors. Or so was the Board’s conclusion in its recently published General Counsel Advice Memorandum [pdf].
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
A wage/hour primer for employers with tipped employees
Employment Law 360 is reporting that a waitress is suing Walt Disney World for improperly taking a “tip credit” and paying her less than the minimum wage even though she spent significant time performing non-tipped work.
That story got me thinking that in the nine-plus years of this blog, I’ve never discussed how the FLSA impacts tipped employees. If you employ tipped workers, today is your lucky day.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
DOL wage/hour agreement with Subway raises legitimate joint-employer concerns
The Department of Labor recently unveiled an agreement with Subway through which the fast-food giant has agreed to assist its franchisees in their wage-and-hour compliance.
the agreement builds upon the division’s ongoing work to provide technical assistance and training to Subway’s franchisees. It also provides an avenue for information-sharing where we will provide data about our concluded investigations with Subway, and they will share their own data with us, generating creative problem solving and sparking new ideas to promote compliance. When circumstances warrant, the franchisor will remind franchisees of the Wage and Hour Division’s authority to investigate their establishments and to examine records. It also specifies that Subway may exercise its business judgment in dealing with a franchisee’s status within the brand, based upon any history of Fair Labor Standards Act violations.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
When the Department of Labor can’t even figure out the FLSA…
According to Employment Law 360, the U.S. Department of Labor has agreed to pay $7 million to settle claims that it failed to pay overtime to thousands of its employees:
“This is the agency that goes around fining all the private employers for doing the same thing that it just ended up paying $7 million to make go away,” said the union’s attorney.…
AFGE’s collective action-type grievance had accused the DOL of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to compensate employees eligible under the statute for suffer or permit overtime. Amid the 10-year legal fight, workers who were classified as FLSA exempt were moved back to FLSA-eligible, the union said.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
Do you like what you read? Receive updates two different ways:
Subscribe to the feed or register for free email updates.