Compensation

« Previous Entries

Pitfalls of Misclassifying “Contract Labor”

Friday, June 4th, 2010

If you are a business owner or manager, you may have had this great idea at one time: “I can save my company lots of money if I hire ‘contract labor’ instead of employees to do this job.”
The hope of every business person is that hiring a contract laborer will allow the company to avoid [...]

Wage Issues Keep Biting Employers

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

In the human resources and employment law trade journals that I regularly read, the headlines proclaim repeatedly that employers are paying their employees incorrectly and getting in legal hot water because of those mistakes. The penalties range from the expensive for any small business owner to the absurd for Wal-Mart.
At the lower end of the [...]

EEOC Ordered to Pay Employer’s Attorneys’ Fees

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Many employers have felt victimized by the federal government’s sometimes overzealous enforcement efforts on behalf of employees against the companies they work for. For example, the current trend regarding any compensation mistake by the employer is to label it “wage theft” and prosecute the employer like a common purse snatcher. (Click here for more information [...]

Are You “Stealing” Your Employees’ Wages?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

If you have employees who you believe are exempt from being paid overtime or the minimum wage (and who doesn’t?), your company is vulnerable to being accused of “wage theft” by the Department of Labor and being faced with repayment of wages, liquidated (double) damages, interest, penalties and attorneys’ fees. “Wage theft” is the new [...]

2011 Budget Means More Enforcement Against Employers

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

I’ve been trying to get the word out to employers for the last several months that the executive branch of the federal government has employers who violate any of the federal employment laws in its sights (click here for an earlier blog post on enforcement efforts). Money for enforcement is pouring into federal agencies like [...]

Overtime for Cell Phone Use?

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about as an employer this year (health care reform, COBRA subsidies, the broad amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and, oh yes, the economy), here is one more thing to keep you up nights.
Have you issued a cell phone to some of your employees? Do you [...]

Minimum Wage Increase Reminder

Friday, July 17th, 2009

This is just a reminder to all employers that the minimum wage rate will increase next week. Any time worked by your employees after 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2009 must be paid at a minimum rate of $7.25 per hour.
This is the last increase from a federal law which began raising the minimum wage [...]

Are You Making Compensation Mistakes?

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I frequently work with clients who are being investigated by the Department of Labor for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that regulates the payment of the minimum wage and overtime compensation. I was recently reminded by a client that the FLSA requires many things that may be legal but certainly [...]

Paying for Employee Training Time

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Dow Chemical’s plant in Freeport, Texas recently had to pay a $861,647 settlement for back wages to 648 operating engineers who claimed they were not compensated for hours spent studying during mandatory training. The Department of Labor (”DOL”)investigated and found that the engineers should have been paid for the time spent in training required by [...]

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Is Now Law

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

As predicted in this blog and by most employment law pundits, President Obama is expected today to sign bill favoring employees as his first piece of major legislation. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overturns a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 2007, which restricted the statute of limitations on Equal Pay Act claims.
Lilly Ledbetter worked [...]

« Previous Entries