The Employer’s Wage and Hour Advisor

On March 5, 2018, the Supreme Court of California declined to follow federal precedent and ruled that employers must follow a more generous state formula for calculating overtime pay where employees receive flat sum bonuses. In Alvarado v. Dart Container Corp., the Court held that the “regular rate of pay” for any flat sum bonus must be calculated by dividing the total amount of the flat sum bonus by the number of non-overtime hours worked by the employee during the pay period applicable to the bonus. The calculated “regular rate of pay” is then multiplied by 1.5 or 2 (depending on the applicable overtime rate under California law) and the total number of overtime hours worked during the applicable pay period to get the total amount of overtime pay attributable to the bonus.

On November 6, 2017, a federal appellate court granted the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) motion to halt the litigation surrounding its 2016 overtime rule. The 2016 rule would have more than doubled the salary thresholds for exempt employees under the administrative, executive, and professional exemptions.

The Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued a request for information (RFI) relating to the 2016 amendments to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (FLSA) overtime regulations. The DOL seeks information “to aid in formulating” revisions to the amended regulations that remain subject to a nationwide injunction. Once again, companies face uncertainty regarding impending changes to the FLSA’s regulations.

A hot topic in 2016 was the implementation of new regulations more than doubling the minimum required salary amount for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In late November 2016, a federal court in Texas enjoined the rules from taking effect, and in December, President Obama’s administration appealed that ruling.

The United States Department of Labor’s long-anticipated revisions to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) overtime regulations may become effective sooner than expected. The Department announced on March 14, 2016 that it submitted its final overtime rules to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), part of the Office of Management and Budget. Once OIRA signs off on the final rules, publication could take place as early as April or May. The Department of Labor previously estimated publication would take place in July of 2016. 

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a non-exempt employee generally must be paid time and a half (1.5x) his or her regular rate of pay for all time worked in excess of 40 hours in a workweek.  The law nevertheless provides some exceptions. One such exception is the “fluctuating workweek method” for calculating overtime (FWW method). Using the FWW method, an employer need only pay an employee half (0.5x) his or her regular rate of pay for every hour over 40. This method makes pay more predictable and less variable to an employee where his or her hours fluctuate week-to-week.

Wage and hour class and collective actions have sky-rocketed in recent years. This increase in “bet the business” litigation has been facilitated, in part, by the unique process courts must follow under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to certify an FLSA collective action (versus a typical class action under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure). Citing the “modest” showing necessary to conditionally certify an FLSA collective action, plaintiffs’ attorneys regularly obtain employee lists without establishing that a case actually can proceed on a class basis. Employers should know, however, that the fight is not over once a court conditionally certifies a collective action.

In June 2015, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced proposed changes to overtime regulations that would significantly increase the minimum salary required to classify an employee as an exempt executive, administrative, or professional employee, and proposed indexing those wages to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics data on annual earnings in future years. Those proposed regulations would increase the minimum weekly salary to the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried workers, which in 2016 the DOL projects will be $970 per week, or $50,440 per year. For highly compensated employees, the threshold would increase to the 90th percentile, or $122,148 annually.  

The dust has settled and now it is official:  Businesses that provide home care services can no longer rely on industry-specific exemptions to federal overtime and minimum wage requirements, and the final rule that says so now has the force and effect of law.

The status of live-in home care workers and companionship employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has become a moving target in recent years, and the most recent move spells big changes for the home care industry.

Are you paying the intern you just sent out to grab your morning cup of coffee?  If not, you may have a wage and hour violation on your hands.  Private employers have increasingly come under attack over their use of unpaid interns by the Department of Labor and private litigants.  This is especially the case where an unpaid intern performs tasks more akin to an administrative assistant than an on-the-job student/trainee.

The White House announced that the long-awaited proposed amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act regulations concerning the so-called “white collar” exemptions will include a substantial increase to the salary required to maintain exempt status for most executive, administrative, and professional employees.

Yesterday, President Obama directed the Secretary of Labor to draft new regulations that will require the payment of overtime wages to many white collar employees who presently do not receive overtime pay.