By now, employers know that on November 22, 2016, federal court Judge Amos Mazzant in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that has blocked – temporarily – the implementation of the revised white collar overtime regulations issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) earlier this year. Those regulations, which have been the focus of concern,
On May 18, 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced the publication of a final rule, updating its existing overtime regulations. The updated regulations are scheduled to become effective on December 1 of this year and are predicted to extend overtime pay protections to over 4 million workers within the first year of implementation. The
Ongoing activity by the Department of Labor (DOL) regarding overtime regulations, coupled with recent federal court decisions regarding compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), have raised the level of attention to wage payment issues — and have increased the risk of employer liability — to new heights. A recent decision by the
The U.S. Department of Labor’s long-awaited proposed rule regarding federal overtime pay regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was issued in a June 30, 2015 Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), and the firestorm of praise/criticism has begun.
While the final rule is months away, controversy started long before the NPRM was issued
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay to non-exempt employees at least one and one-half times the employees’ regular hourly wage for every hour worked in excess of 40 in a week. Courts regularly have held that the goal of the FLSA is to counteract the inequality of bargaining power between employees
On March 13, 2014, President Obama signed a presidential memorandum which instructs the Secretary of Labor to update regulations regarding overtime protections. According to White House officials, and supported by a fact sheet issued on that same date, the President’s memorandum will change the overtime laws so that a number of new workers would
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal has determined that an employer’s permanent modification of employees’ “workweeks” in a way that reduced the number of overtime hours did not violate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Abshire v. Redland Energy Services, IIC, 8th Cir., No. 11-3380, October 10, 2012.
The FLSA states that workers who
The 4th U.S. Court of Appeals has dismissed an employee’s lawsuit, holding that the individual’s inability to work overtime hours was not a substantial limitation that would entitle him to the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Boitnott v. Corning Incorporated, 4th Cir., No. 10-1769, February 10, 2012.
Michael Boitnott, an employee of
The Fair Labor Standards Act provides that employers violating the Act’s overtime pay requirements are liable for the amount of unpaid overtime. In addition, such an employer may be held liable for an equal amount of liquidated damages, unless it can show that it acted in “good faith” and with “reasonable grounds for believing” that
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that overtime compensation be paid at a rate of not less than one-and-a-half times the regular rate of pay of all hours worked in excess of 40 during a particular workweek. Recently, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division responded to a request for an opinion on whether
