Winter is coming … for the FLSA’s salary test

In case you’ve been living in the dark for the past year, the FLSA’s salary test is due for some changes, and the changes are coming soon. The latest intel suggests that the reguations—which will increase salary-level at which employees will qualify for the administrative, executive, professional, and computer employee exemptions from $23,660 per year (or $455 per week) to an expected $50,440 per year (or $970 per week)—will publish in July with an effective date in September.

Last week, the George Mason University’s Mercatus Center published a comperehensive analysis of why these new regulations will be detriemental to employers and employees. The report (pdf here, h/t Overlawyered) is well worth your time if you are interested in a solid analysis of the intended and unintended consequences of adding an estimated five million additional workers to the rolls of the non-exempt.

I’d like to focus on one such unintended consequence—lack of workplace flexibility.

WIRTW #407 (the “cumin” edition)

Name the two greatest characters in the history of television. Mine are Archie Bunker at number 1, and David Brent at number 1(a). While Arhcie Bunker will never again grace the world with his bon mots, thank god for Ricky Gervais, who is giving David Brent and all of his clueless uncomfortableness new life with an entire movie, the trailer for which was just released.

If you’ve never seen the original British verion of The Office, immediately go the Netflix and watch it all. It’s only seven hours (give or take) from start to finish. What are you waiting for? You’re at work, you say. Well, it is work related, right?

Here’s the rest of what I read this week.

Huffington Post runs my bullying story

It started with a personal email from Arianna Huffington herself:

We would love to feature your voice on HuffPost on this important issue as it would resonate with many of our readers.

With that, my post about what employers and employees can learn from my son being bullied at school is now running on the Huffington Post, and I’m an official HuffPost blogger.

You can (re)read the story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-hyman/when-schoolyard-bullies-b_b_9609884.html.

If you don’t mind doing me a solid, click on the link and share my story on your personal pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Ohio introduces unnecessary pregnancy legislation

Last week, the Pregnancy Reasonable Accommodation Act (S.B. 301) [pdf] was introduced in the Ohio Senate. The bill seeks to raise pregnancy to the level of a protected disability.

No matter what the producers of #Hamilton tell you, race is never a BFOQ

True confession time. I am not a fan of Hamilton. I don’t get it. Never have, never will. I will probably go to my grave having never seen what people tell me is the greatest thing to come to Broadway in the last few decades. And I’m perfectly okay with that.

I say this as prologue to today’s thought, which discusses this ad (h/t HuffPost), in which the producers of the Broadway seek “NON-WHITE men and women, ages 20s to 30s, for Broadway and upcoming Tours!”

An employer need not read minds about reasonable accomodations

The ADA’s interactive process is a two-way street. For an employee to present a valid ADA claim, the employee must actively participate in the reasonable-accommodation discussion. The employee cannot simply provide the employer a doctor’s excuse and then turn a deaf ear to the employer’s offers to accommodate.

Case in point? Agee v. Mercedes-Benz U.S. Int’l. (11th Cir. 3/30/16).

WIRTW #406 (the “April Fools” edition)

Happy April Fool’s Day.

Here’s what I read this week.