Company owes $62k to workers required to drop of trucks Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA), all travel between job sites throughout the workday must be paid. This includes if employees are required to “check in” at their employer’s location after completing their work at the end of the day. Making mistakes [...]
FMLA may supersede rules on breaktimes What happens when an employee asks to take repeated, short breaks each workday for a health condition? Should you be making sure that person gets paid – or does the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) supersede the rules on breaktimes? The Dept. of Labor (DOL) [...]
Employer falsified timecards, then disposed of them Investigators found glaring paycheck errors at a food-processing plant in Westbury, NY, the state attorney general announced. From 2013 to 2017, Diversified Processors Inc. and Processors Inc. mishandled minimum wage and overtime payments due to 10 plant workers. Now, the employer must pay $120,555 in [...]
Self-audit initiative would limit liability if violations found Sometimes, self-audits of a company’s payroll process may uncover surprising issues with paying workers correctly. The Dept. of Labor (DOL) is throwing a lifeline to employers who discover wage problems with its newest initiative, the Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program. Specific requirements [...]
How companies know if they’re eligible, what to track & more More companies are offering workers paid medical and family leave. Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, this could earn them a tax credit in the next two years. The amount of the credit ranges from 12.5% if employees [...]
What’s included in Opinion Letter 2018-14 The Department of Labor (DOL) hasn’t always been clear about when you’re able to make deductions from exempt employees’ pay if they’re absent from work. But now that the DOL has issued Opinion Letter FLSA 2018-14 on that topic, you have the guidance you need [...]
When it comes to employee achievement awards in the form of gift cards and cash, you’ve been right all along: These awards count as income and are taxable. So say the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which finally puts this rule in writing to settle the issue. Guidelines for awards [...]
Courts reject old six-part test in favor of different standard It just became a little easier to figure out how interns should be paid, thanks to several recent court decisions. After the latest case, Benjamin et al. v. B & H Education, the Dept. of Labor (DOL) revamped its test to determine whether [...]
Be prepared to show the overall impact isn’t a negative one There’s a common, and understandable, line of thinking that rounding nonexempt employees’ hours to a set time works because their hours will even out over time. But this practice has come under scrutiny, warned Tammy McCutchen, attorney and former administrator of [...]
Need a primer on what not to during a federal investigation of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) compliance? Look no further than a recent Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals case: Perez v El Tequila LLC. Problems with records In this case, the federal court found that El Tequila, a restaurant chain, intentionally [...]
